GFDL 1.3 Is Out, Allows Migration To CC

David Gerard writes "Version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License is out (FAQ). This license is little-used, except on the #8 site in the world: Wikipedia. And this version includes special provisions to re-license wiki-based content from GFDL to the much simpler Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 3.0, as requested by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia plans to hold a public consultation process to decide whether and how to migrate to CC-BY-SA. The discussion is already running hot and heavy."

Comments

Bewildered

[Linker3000]

Am I the only one bewildered by the sheer number of different GNU/FOSS/Whatever-the-right-term-is licences in a field that strives for compatibility and standards?

Re:Bewildered

[jonaskoelker]

Before GFDL arrived nearly every software product had a different licence.

Wouldn't that be the GPL you're talking about? The GNU FDL is the license meant for doc, not src.

The general public license is a license that takes the ideas of the Bison public license, the Emacs public license plus some others, and puts those ideas into one license. The FSF then changed the licensing of Bison/Emacs/???/Profit to use the GPL rather than the [BE?P]PL.

And the GPL is a good thing. The problem is that we've been going back to the old days. Instead of emacs and bison, we have the Linux public license, the ZFS public license, the Apache public license, the Perl public license, the Python public license and the Firefox public license.

[Some of names have been changed to indict the guilty ;)]

Even if only counting the FSF licenses, we have a large amount. It means the compatibility matrix is huge, and entries can only be accessed in polynomial time by lawyers.

It even _sounds_ simpler too!

[g253]

I mean, try and explain to someone that your work is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3! That just souns silly and verbose.

Much simpler to just say "oh, you know, it's under a plain old Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 3.0".


(I'm kidding, I actually consider this important, it's just that catchy names isn't FOSS' people strongest point ;-)

My take.

[apathy maybe]

I haven't looked at this new version of the GFDL yet, but previous versions were simply too complicated for my purposes. I'm not publishing a book, I don't need to worry about front and back covers etc.

I refuse to use CC licences at all either. Which licence? You can use this under the CC licence? Which one? The BY-SA-UK version 1.2 one. The what? Exactly.

Not to mention, in some of the licence terms (depending on which country I think), there are non-free restrictions. For example, not allowed to use the text to libel or some such.

Creative Commons encourages people (both "creators" and users) not to read licences, not to know that their rights are, and generally be ignorant.

What do I do instead? Something simple. Something like:

Copyright 2008 apathy maybe
You are free to use and modify this work, for any purpose, in any medium with the following condition.
This entire licence text is retained and applies to any copy and/or modification.

I get across the point that I want my work to be used, but only on the condition that the copyright line stays, and that downstream viewers of the work have the same right to use and modify the work.

And that is all that is needed for the vast majority of things that I have ever "published" (including photographs).

"Stallman is hard to deal with"

[br00tus]

For years we here how hard Stallman is to deal with, supposedly. How it is all about him and he is egotistical etc.

Wikipedia is the crown jewel of GFDL. But - GFDL was really originally written to deal with technical documentation to accompany GPL software, not to deal with content on wikis etc. But it seemed like a good license when Wikipedia started so they used it. There is also a lot of Creative Commons content out there that Wikipedia wants to work with, and the GFDL provisions made working everything together difficult.

So what does Stallman do? He magnaminously allows the crown jewel of using GFDL to move towards the CC world, if Wikipedia wants. Can we imagine Microsoft, or SCO or proprietary licensed software companies doing this? No. And it is helping the digital commons community, although from now on Stallman and the FSF will not being getting kudos for the license for Wikipedia content from now on, because Stallman was so gracious about it.

There is a difference between holding to your principles, and being stubborn just for the sake of ego or whatever. Stallman has always held to his principles regarding freedom. But here is an example of him working with others, and being flexible, to help the greater cause of the digital commons. I have to read for years about how inflexible Stallman supposedly is, here is an example to the contrary. Because Stallman is flexible, he is only inflexible about his principles and about freedom.