Toward healthy paranoia

Posted Sep 20, 2013 18:00 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: Toward healthy paranoia by khim
Parent article: Toward healthy paranoia

> Well, sure. They accepted that the Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. And they were promised that such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Good, we're in agreement then. The FSF obviously felt the proposed Creative Commons license was "similar in spirit" to the GFDL, while resolving a number of issues which arose because what it was being applied to was not, in fact, documentation. They weren't breaking any promises, just using their position as the authoritative publisher of new versions of the GFDL to resolve real problems and concerns relating the GFDL in the context of WikiMedia.

> That's fundamental violation of principle The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal.

There are no "vassels" here, only free individuals choosing licenses for their contributions without thinking through all the possible consequences.

Toward healthy paranoia

Posted Sep 20, 2013 21:05 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

The FSF obviously felt the proposed Creative Commons license was "similar in spirit" to the GFDL, while resolving a number of issues which arose because what it was being applied to was not, in fact, documentation.

Few questions:
1. How could FSF know if CC-BY-SA 10.0 will have any resemblance to GFDL at all? They allowed relicensing from GFDL 1.2 to CC-BY-SA 10.0, after all.
2. Their promise quite explicitly said any later version published by the Free Software Foundation - is it fair to abuse this permission to switch to some other license not published by Free Software Foundation?
2. If CC-BY-SA is “similar in spirit” and actually resembles GFDL then why FSF says (quite explicitly) that we do not want to grant people this permission for any and all works released under the FDL?

They weren't breaking any promises, just using their position as the authoritative publisher of new versions of the GFDL to resolve real problems and concerns relating the GFDL in the context of WikiMedia.

No. They were abusing their position as the authoritative publisher of new versions of the GFDL to loan certain GFDL-licensed works to other fiefdom. They most definitely don't feel that CC-BY-SA is “similar in spirit” enough to give free pass to all GFDL users, they only exchanged parts of their congregation, not all of them.

There are no "vassels" here, only free individuals choosing licenses for their contributions without thinking through all the possible consequences.

It's idle talk. We can agree that individuals have chosen licenses without thinking too much about consequences, but there are also the fact that FSF treated these “free individuals” as serfs who have no power over their own creations because they once signed them away by choosing to license their work under “GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.[012] or any later version”. Their wishes were irrelevant, their intents were ignored, new license was created to fulfill the Wikimedia Foundation's request, not to satisfy unanimous resolution of Wikipedia authors. Indeed with unanimous resolution they could have switched to any license of their choosing without FSF's involvement.

Note that CC-BY-SA is even more devious then GFDL: it embeds ability to use “a later version of this License” in the text of license itself. Even if you distribute something under CC-BY-SA 2.5 or CC-BY-SA 3.0 one may use text of CC-BY-SA 10.0 (which can include anything Creative Commons Corporation will want to include in it) and you can not disagree with that hijacking by omitting “or later” text from the license grant.