Open Source Content License (OSCL) - Other/Miscellaneous licenses

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Tue Apr 1 04:07:33 UTC 2008


Wilson, Andrew wrote:
> Still not clear to me from context whether you are concerned about (a) choice of license for content on your website, (b) choice of license for your mediawiki software, or (c) both.
>   
I think the mediawiki he's talking about is a GPL-ed product owned by 
Wikimedia Foundation.
> the obvious choice of licenses would be the GNU Free Documentation License and/or the Creative Commons share-alike family of licenses.  Specify these licenses in your contributor's agreement.
Much as I am a fan of FSF, I wouldn't recommend GFDL for new work until 
FSF deals with its issues. That could be never, because Richard has 
refused to do anything about it so far. The text "You may not use 
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying 
of the copies you make or distribute." is meant to say "no DRM". This is 
a noble intent, but the language is so vague that it could apply to file 
permissions and login security. The Wikipedia finally had to work out a 
migration plan with FSF so that they could switch to a Creative Commons 
license. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update

But this is getting outside of the scope of this list, isn't it? OSI 
does software licenses.

    Thanks

    Bruce





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