On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:05:54AM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 05/27/2009 12:00 AM, Ben Cotton wrote:
The OPL has served us very well for a long time, I'm sad to see us move from it, but at this point the writing is clear. We gain a lot by going with a proper CC license.
Pardon my noobness, but what is it that we gain? I don't have any objections to changing per se, but I'd like to know what the argument is before I support it. :-)
Discussions starting at
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2009-April/msg00061.html
Short version: CC BY SA is a much more widely used license allowing for more sharing of content and it is better known and understood as well.
Let's make sure we keep our various legal minds roped in. I know that Spot mentioned Red Hat Legal may be very much in favor of going with CC BY-SA, so that may a problem solved before we had it. :-)
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 03:45:31PM -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Let's make sure we keep our various legal minds roped in. I know that Spot mentioned Red Hat Legal may be very much in favor of going with CC BY-SA, so that may a problem solved before we had it. :-)
Didn't Richard Fontana weigh in directly on the previous discussion?
Regardless, one of the things I'd have to do with this task is coordinate with Red Hat's Content Services team, who just did a re-licensing, and make sure we are copacetic. That will require a double-tap from Legal, approving the Red Hat content relicensing as well as the Fedora. I'll make sure it is explicitly covered instead of just implicitly.
- Karsten
On 05/26/2009 03:56 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 03:45:31PM -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Let's make sure we keep our various legal minds roped in. I know that Spot mentioned Red Hat Legal may be very much in favor of going with CC BY-SA, so that may a problem solved before we had it. :-)
Didn't Richard Fontana weigh in directly on the previous discussion?
Regardless, one of the things I'd have to do with this task is coordinate with Red Hat's Content Services team, who just did a re-licensing, and make sure we are copacetic. That will require a double-tap from Legal, approving the Red Hat content relicensing as well as the Fedora. I'll make sure it is explicitly covered instead of just implicitly.
I know Richard reads fedora-legal-list, so I'll wait for him to chime in, but in the past, he's expressed that he would very much like for us to move the wiki from OPL to CC-BY-SA.
~spot
On Tue, 26 May 2009 17:29:20 -0400 "Tom "spot" Callaway" tcallawa@redhat.com wrote:
I know Richard reads fedora-legal-list, so I'll wait for him to chime in, but in the past, he's expressed that he would very much like for us to move the wiki from OPL to CC-BY-SA.
Such a decision should be made by Fedora qua Fedora, consistent with Fedora's licensing guidelines and general rationality (which is true of the current situation with the use of the OPL and would be true if the license of choice were CC-BY-SA instead).
FWIW, my personal view is that switching from OPL to CC-BY-SA makes a lot of sense. In my opinion, the OPL is now a fairly dated license with some flaws. That alone isn't a reason not to use it, for a content author who happens to like it, but the availability of CC-BY-SA shows that there is a license with the same desirable policies (from Fedora's perspective) that is the result of more careful legal drafting. As others have pointed out, CC-BY-SA is today a more widely used license, has a track record of responsible revisions, and the author of the OPL himself would seem to be in favor of OPL users moving on to CC licenses.
I've heard one or two people in the Fedora docs community say that CC-BY-SA permits combination, or relicensing, under a broad set of licenses with similar policies including the OPL. That is actually not correct (at least for version 3.0 of CC-BY-SA). CC-BY-SA 3.0 says:
You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License.
A "Creative Commons Compatible License" is defined as
a license that is listed at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses that has been approved by Creative Commons as being essentially equivalent to this License, including, at a minimum, because that license: (i) contains terms that have the same purpose, meaning and effect as the License Elements of this License; and, (ii) explicitly permits the relicensing of adaptations of works made available under that license under this License or a Creative Commons jurisdiction license with the same License Elements as this License.
However, http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses says that "to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility", and I don't think the OPL would meet the given standard anyway.
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 10:46, Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
However, http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses says that "to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility", and I don't think the OPL would meet the given standard anyway.
-- Richard E. Fontana Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel Red Hat, Inc.
Hi Richard, Thanks for the information. What does this mean for current works that are now downstream if we change the license? Would we have to give general permission to those works or are they still covered because they met the requirements of the original license?
Thanks, Eric Docs Project Lead
On Thu, 28 May 2009 15:31:13 -0400 Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us wrote:
Hi Richard, Thanks for the information. What does this mean for current works that are now downstream if we change the license? Would we have to give general permission to those works or are they still covered because they met the requirements of the original license?
Hi Eric,
Not sure if this is what you are asking, but: We can (and probably would want to) extend permission to cover all past works that have been released. This would not revoke the original permissions given under the OPL, as those permissions are permanent, but it would supplement them (i.e., past works would thereafter become dual-licensed under OPL and CC-BY-SA).
If some Fedora work W licensed under OPL is modified downstream by A (W'), and assume that the OPL requires A to license W' including its changes under OPL: A can relicense W' under CC-BY-SA by agreeing to relicense its changes under CC-BY-SA, but otherwise a downstream recipient of W' receives it under OPL only.
- RF
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 16:42, Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Thu, 28 May 2009 15:31:13 -0400 Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us wrote:
Hi Richard, Thanks for the information. What does this mean for current works that are now downstream if we change the license? Would we have to give general permission to those works or are they still covered because they met the requirements of the original license?
Hi Eric,
Not sure if this is what you are asking, but: We can (and probably would want to) extend permission to cover all past works that have been released. This would not revoke the original permissions given under the OPL, as those permissions are permanent, but it would supplement them (i.e., past works would thereafter become dual-licensed under OPL and CC-BY-SA).
If some Fedora work W licensed under OPL is modified downstream by A (W'), and assume that the OPL requires A to license W' including its changes under OPL: A can relicense W' under CC-BY-SA by agreeing to relicense its changes under CC-BY-SA, but otherwise a downstream recipient of W' receives it under OPL only.
- RF
Richard, That's exactly what I was asking about. Thanks!
Eric