Personally, I'd rather not have to deal with the ins and out of various licenses for themes and plugins in the -extras repository. We have decided in the past to stick to ASL compatible licenses. I'd rather see it stay that way. It simplifies things and helps us keep focus. On the Apache third party licenses page linked earlier, none of the CC licenses are mentioned, thus making their compatiblity murky. As Chris noted, on it's FAQ page CC specifically recommends that their license not be used for code. I'd rather follow their recommendation than second guess it. In addition, in the text on the CC by Attribution page linked earlier, it is specified that the attribution must be made "in the manner specified by the author or licensor". This would preclude removing, or even moving links to original author's site in the output of plugins or theme , links that have already been decided are fair game for removal.
RIck On Dec 18, 1:23 am, Chris Meller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Dec 18, 2010, at 12:27 AM, Owen Winkler wrote: > > > Source code does not qualify as a "work" under section f of the full > > CC license, and so it cannot be the license under which code in our > > repo can be released. > > I would disagree with your interpretation of the language in section f. The > "without limitation" and "whatever may be the mode or form of its expression" > portions say to me (in exaggerated legalese) "whatever you've created that > you say is licensed". > > That said, I found that CC actually includes a FAQ entry [1] about licensing > software under a CC license. They recommend you use a different FSF-endorsed > license instead as CC licenses don't distinguish between source and object > code. Since PHP code is all source (you don't compile it into objects for > distribution) I'd say that's really a non-issue, but the point is well taken. > We shouldn't encourage licensing of contributions under an Attribution > license, but it does seem possible. > > > However, authors may choose to license their > > theme art using a CC license while their code is licensed with > > something ASL compatible. > > I hadn't thought about multiple licenses, my code only provides for a single > license. I don't think we've yet encountered a situation where someone has > wanted to split-license an addon, so I'm going to continue to ignore this > possibility in the interest of expedience. If and when it comes up we can put > more thought into how to best handle these kinds of situations both in code > and display / community-awareness. In the meantime let's focus just on > licenses that would be applicable to the entire contribution. > > > I think it's worthwhile to note two additional things. First, it's > > generally accepted that art that uses CC-by license allows the artist > > to indicate the means by which they must be credited. Doing so may > > violate other ASL-compatible license clauses. > > I think Section 4(b) fairly well covers the means by which the contributor > must be credited: > > (i) the name or pseudonym of the original author (or organization, etc. they > claim has rights) > (ii) the title of the work > (iii) the URI associated with the work > > None of those seem to allow ambiguity or violate the ASL. In fact they would > seem slightly less strict than the ASL's Section 4.3, which says you have to > retain *all* copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices. > > > Second, if as a > > community we allow these multi-license projects into our repo, we > > should also be specific about which artistic licenses should be > > allowed, and I would personally prefer a license that allows full > > re-use without retaining credit. > > I'm assuming that by "allows full re-use without retaining credit" you mean > something akin to the Drupal requirement than any contributed addons be > credited to the community, rather than a single author? > > As long as it's made available under a license that grants appropriate rights > to modify and redistribute I see no reason to require that all contributors > forfeit any remaining rights by essentially transferring them to the project, > which is what such a requirement would require. More freedom for code is > always a good thing, but I don't believe we should enforce that by limiting > the freedom of the author, even if it wouldn't amount to much in practice. > > [1]:http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_use_... -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-dev
