For the sake of completeness, I am not about starting a new commercial
activity using DBpedia (I would be happy to do so, but I am not), this
was more like a "philosophical" question. I am a member of Wikimedia
Italia (Italian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation) and in a recent
discussion on CC Italian mailing list[1] (which is unrelated from WMF,
but many people have common ideas ;-)... ) somebody was wondering if
CC-BY-SA was suitable for databases (like Open Street Map) and how
database-like works built from Wikipedia (or OSM or any other free
project) should be licensed.

2010/3/15 Peter Ansell <[email protected]>:
> The engine that uses the mappings could be licensed under another
> license though.

IMHO, this is a fundamental point.
I mean... even if DBpedia software would be released using a viral
license[2] (like GPL, for instance) and also Wikipedia license has
this property  ("SA" condition), probably a "derivative" work in the
sense above could be released with a non free license.
But this isn't this likely to betray the spirit of the original licenses?
On the other hand a software *or something built on the top of a
research engine using only information and not the original software*
is a well different product either from an encyclopaedia or the
research engine itself. How can you call it a "derivative work" and
why it should it be affected by the virality of the "original work"?
On an different but not uncorrelated topic, I repeat I haven't
understood yet with what license DBpedia software is released (i.e.
DBpedia engine).

Thank you for your time.

Cristian

[1] a pointer (if you can read italian)
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-it/2010-March/thread.html#start
[2] a viral license requires the derivative work to be released with
the same license of the original

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