[IMC-Docs] Licenses - again - proposal for consensus

[Alster]

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kwadronaut at autistici.org wrote:
> There was a discussion from august 2005 till some months later about adapting
> the copyright license on docs. Currently the content copyrights are retained by
> the authors but nothing is specified about reusing content elsewhere. Something
> which i consider necessary as an indymedia-project.
> 
> Basically the outcome of the earlier debate was:
> by(attribution)-nc(non-commercial)-sa(share alike) or by-sa or public domain.
> 
> Can we retry to come to some consensus before June 1?

I'd appreciate it.

> I think i would prefer a by-nc-sa license. I think it's more in the spirit of
> Indymedia to specify the non-commercial part. If someone wants to reuse an
> article they can, if they want to try to become rich with it, they have to ask
> the authors.

This would effectively make it quite impossible for commercial entities
to use content published on the wiki, as - while it is normally
theoretically possible to contact publishers through the wiki - the
publishers do not have to be the same as the authors (copyright
holders), and contacting many different contributors of a single wiki
page and getting everyones' written permission to reuse their part of
the work is virtually impossible.

I'm not sure how much I dislike the idea of commercial forcing entities
into deciding between not using or illegally using content published on
the wiki (which will - in most cases - boil down to them not using it).
But I do dislike it in a way. On the other hand, I don't want them to be
able to do whatever they want with it, and I like (but don't consider
neccessary) the idea of granting them less rights than non-commercial
entities.

Summing up, I guess my suggestion would be by-sa.

I hope I'm not misinterpreting
by(attribution)-nc(non-commercial)-sa(share alike) here.

> Also: the software is gnu-licensed, does that limit the possible licenses for
> the content too?

I don't think so, even though, on the contrary, I believe that Microsoft
holds (or claims to hold) partial copyright in every content produced
with Ms Office.

Alster
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