On 16 March 2010 08:54, Cristian Consonni <[email protected]> wrote: > 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"?
The information is mapped directly from Wikipedia. The mapping files, and the resulting data have very direct information links to the content in each of the Wikipedia's, so the use of the DBpedia software on Wikipedia CC-BY-SA data will create data files that need to be licensed under CC-BY-SA. If the engine is sufficiently removed from the Wikipedia scenario, ie, if it could be used on any MediaWiki dump, then it probably wouldn''t be classed as a derivative work. It depends on whether there is hard coded information in the software that relies on Wikipedia I guess as to whether it fits or not, but it is a vague area in many senses. > 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). According to the sourceforge project page [1], the engine is released into the Public Domain, but you would have to look at the individual files for their copyright notices to confirm that there aren't other licenses, and check the dependencies to make sure there are no viral dependencies, like GPL for instance. Public Domain is definitely not viral, but it is open source if people want to extend it and they choose to keep the Public Domain or use another open license. Cheers, Peter [1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbpedia/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Dbpedia-discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dbpedia-discussion
