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Appropedia:Which free license should you use?
From Appropedia
- This is a proposed Appropedia guideline. You can edit it, or discuss it on the talk page or at the Appropedia policy discussion page.
The short version of our recommendation is: use CC-BY[1] or a dual license of CC-BY-SA and GFDL. This would mean that for the questions "Allow commercial uses of your work?" and "Allow modifications of your work?" - the answer is "Yes".
CC-BY as a good option as it gives more flexibility for the content users, including non-commercial and copyright end-uses.
There is also some discussion (May 2008) about Appropedia moving to CC-BY - if so, then only public domain and CC-BY material will be usable on Appropedia (except when clearly marked as a different license - but we would want to minimize the use of different licenses on the wiki, as it will be a bit confusing and reduce the ability to remix content).
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[edit] Original content producers
Let's consider the case that you're producing original content and want it to be freely used. If you do publish content by others, it will be clearly cited with the license or copyright made clear.[1]
For this case, the CC-BY license is good. This gives a lot of freedom to people using your work, only requiring attribution.
This allows it to be used in GFDL (which Appropedia is currently using, as is Wikipedia). It also allows others to use the work in a more restricted context, including mixing it with their own copyrighted material, or using a non-commercial license (NC). I don't like the NC clause for most cases, but it's often used in an educational context which you would want to support. The CC-BY is good for allowing that usage.
If you prefer to use CC-BY-SA, and want Appropedia to use your content, then it's only slightly more complex - you would need to multi-license (i.e. CC-BY-SA and GFDL).
See also this explanation of all CC licenses which explains the various options.
One of Appropedia's partner organizations is AIDG, and now that they've switched to the CC-BY license, we can use their excellent content, with attribution.
[edit] Argument for CC-BY-SA: keeping ideas free
Wikipedia is in discussions with Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation (owners of the GFDL) to develop a successor to the GFDL which is identical to the CC-BY-SA license. They had announced that this was to be ready last month but it has been delayed.
This would seem to be the ideal license for Appropedia.
Consider a practical case. I develop a design which works for me. I put full details on Appropedia, every component. You take this design and adapt it to suit the conditions where you live - different climate, different quality raw materials. You want to start a little business makeing and selling the improved design. CC-BY-NC would prevent you selling the stuff you make. CC-BY-SA or GFDL (so called share-alike or copyleft licenses) would let you do this but would require you to let your customers make copies of your adapted design and would encourage (but not require) you to post your improvements back to Appropedia. CC-BY would let you sell improved versions of the design and would let you sue anyone (even me - the author of the original design) who makes a copy of your improvements. I believe the share-alike licenses (CC-BY-SA and GFDL) are the most appropriate for Appropedia.81.187.181.168 23:44, 16 June 2008 (PDT)
- Great point. I wonder if this is a significant issue with content apart from designs? --Chriswaterguy 04:28, 17 June 2008 (PDT)
- I believe it is a siignificant issue for most of the information on Appropedia. The great thing about share-alike licenses is that each user can build on the contributions of previous users. What starts out as an idea can develop into a theory, an experiment, a design, a product, a business, an industry and the information stays available for all to use at every stage. I wouldn't want to contribute to Appropedia if I thought someone could take my contribution and use it and not share there developments with me. 81.187.181.168 10:49, 17 June 2008 (PDT)
- Over at Akvo.org we have more or less decided that we are going to follow Wikipedia's lead. When they move to the GNU FDL 2.0 license we will too, and then hopefully it will be compatible with the CC-BY-SA license, and interchangeable. Mark Charmer from Akvo discussed this with Andrew Lamb of Appropedia the other day and wrote a blog post about it. --Bjelkeman 18 June 2008
[edit] More about how the CC-BY license works
This is the most free of all the Creative Commons licenses. The only restriction that is applied is the requirement for attribution.
[edit] How to apply a license
To apply a Creative Commons license, go to http://creativecommons.org/ and click "License Your Work" at the top, then follow the steps.
If you want the CC-BY license, for the questions "Allow commercial uses of your work?" and "Allow modifications of your work?" the answer is "Yes".
[edit] Notes
- ↑ A citation should mention that it's copyright, or GFDL, or CC-BY-SA or whatever... most people don't worry about this on the web, and for small "fair use" extracts it probably doesn't matter. But I think being clear about licenses & copyright (when using reasonable chunks of content) is especially important on a site that uses an open license by default. I'm not sure what a reasonable chunk is, but I'm sure it's not an issue for just a sentence or two.
