Documentation/text license.

Ideas and plans to talk about
Antworten
opencaching.su

It is obvious code license (either GPL ar AGPL) is not suitable for documentation. There are special licenses for text. GNU offers GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). It seems it is not very popular. Another option is Creative Commons (CC) family of licenses. For example, Wikipedia is released under CC.

However, CC is a family of licenses. In this family of licenses there two which are suitable for our documentation and texts:

1. CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike) — This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

2. CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) — This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

(Explanations are copied from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/).

The second one is like the first, but prohibits commercial use. I guess if someone wants to use materials covered by CC BY-NC-SA, s/he have to receive permission from the copyright holder.

Thus, the question: Which of these two licenses is suitable for documentation?

BTW, I believe the same license could be applied to cache descriptions, e. g. Opencaching site content.
oliver

1) Why is the AGPL not suitable for source code documentation?

2) What license should be applies to images, icons and such things?

3) What license should be applies to info-text content on the website?
http://www.opencaching.de/articles.php?page=geocaching
http://www.opencaching.de/articles.php?page=cacheinfo

4) What license should be applies to user committed content?
=> Here i think the CC-BY-ND is okay, but licensing existing content under this license will be difficult. One point that is not required by the CC-licenses: It would be good to have the content always up to date. Think of a website publishing our caches, but not updating the listings (any more) ...
opencaching.su

[quote="oliver"]
1) Why is the AGPL not suitable for source code documentation?

2) What license should be applies to images, icons and such things?

3) What license should be applies to info-text content on the website?
http://www.opencaching.de/articles.php?page=geocaching
http://www.opencaching.de/articles.php?page=cacheinfo

4) What license should be applies to user committed content?
=> Here i think the CC-BY-ND is okay, but licensing existing content under this license will be difficult. One point that is not required by the CC-licenses: It would be good to have the content always up to date. Think of a website publishing our caches, but not updating the listings (any more) ...
[/quote]

1. See GPL FAQ (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html):

> Why don't you use the GPL for manuals?
> It is possible to use the GPL for a manual, but the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is much better for manuals. ...

For example, Wikipedia content is covered by CC BY-SA, but MediaWiki (Wikipedia' engine) is covered by GPL. (Why not AGPL? I do not know.)

2. Hmm... If you create a picture from scratch (e. g. by pressing a button at your photo camera), you are free to use any license. If you copy it from another source, you must use license assigned by the author.

I would say for all non-code (articles, images, etc.) CC BY-*-SA is more suitable.

3. Since it is non-code but content => CC BY-*-SA.

4. CC BY-*-SA.

> Here i think the CC-BY-ND...

Is this a typo? "ND" means "No derivatives". Are you sure?

> One point that is not required by the CC-licenses: It would be good to have the content always up to date. Think of a website publishing our caches, but not updating the listings (any more) ...

Yes, I see. But how to require it? Whether it possible? What if a site is pre-paid for a long time but forgotten by the maintainer? (For any reason, including serious like months in a hospital or so.) If site does not up-to-date its content, probably this problem will be sorted out in natural way. I mean if a site copying case descriptions from another site, it must attribute them prominently, so visitor will the the origin of the descriptions. If site does not update descriptions regularly, it would be a good reason for visitor to switch to another site...
oliver

[quote="Van de Bugger"]4. CC BY-*-SA.

> Here i think the CC-BY-ND...

Is this a typo? "ND" means "No derivatives". Are you sure?[/quote]

-BY to name the owner of the desciption and probably the original website where the user committed the content.
May -SA would be good ... but it does not automatically apply to user-content the was committed to the foreign website.

-ND ... difficult. The original website should be able to switch the state from "active" to "archived" and probably make minor changes like assigning additional attributes. But i think it would be bad if anyone could publish a modified version of a cache description. I think the users would not like it and not understand it.

[quote="Van de Bugger"]> One point that is not required by the CC-licenses: It would be good to have the content always up to date. Think of a website publishing our caches, but not updating the listings (any more) ...

Yes, I see. But how to require it? Whether it possible? What if a site is pre-paid for a long time but forgotten by the maintainer? (For any reason, including serious like months in a hospital or so.) If site does not up-to-date its content, probably this problem will be sorted out in natural way. I mean if a site copying case descriptions from another site, it must attribute them prominently, so visitor will the the origin of the descriptions. If site does not update descriptions regularly, it would be a good reason for visitor to switch to another site...
[/quote]

"fotgotten by the maintainer" should be the exception the we cannot control.
I think we should prepare our licenses for the ordinary situation.
opencaching.su

[quote="oliver"]
[quote="Van de Bugger"]4. CC BY-*-SA.

> Here i think the CC-BY-ND...

Is this a typo? "ND" means "No derivatives". Are you sure?[/quote]

-BY to name the owner of the desciption and probably the original website where the user committed the content.
May -SA would be good ... but it does not automatically apply to user-content the was committed to the foreign website.

-ND ... difficult. The original website should be able to switch the state from "active" to "archived" and probably make minor changes like assigning additional attributes. But i think it would be bad if anyone could publish a modified version of a cache description. I think the users would not like it and not understand it.
[/quote]

"ND" ("No derivatives") looks too restrictive to me. It means that nobody except the original author can change the text. Of course copyright holder can pass his/her right to another person, but it require explicit (written?) permission from the copyright holder.

I am not familiar with rules of non-Russian geocaching sites. At Geocaching.su, if author do not participate in the game for a long time, a cache may be passed to another maintainer. "ND" effectively disables it.

It seems OC allows cache description to be written in several languages. "No derivatives" also prevents (or makes it difficult) translation to other languages.

I do not mind other sites will lis OC caches, because they have to provide a hyperlink to original cache page.

Thus, "ND" is too restrictive, and does not meet (my) idea of Opencaching.

What do you think about "NC" (No commercial usage)? It is more tricky.

> May -SA would be good ... but it does not automatically apply to user-content the was committed to the foreign website.

What is current policy of German node about user-submitted content?
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