[GNUz] Fwd: Academics Discuss MS vs. OSS

[Nick Rout]

On Sat, 2005-06-18 at 22:00 +1200, Richard Tindall wrote:

> ..I think this must have been what Jim explained to me:
> 
> Wiki, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode
> 
> "*4. Restrictions.* The license granted in Section 3 above is
> expressly 
> made subject to and limited by the following restrictions:
> a. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
> publicly 
> digitally perform the Work only under the terms of this License, and
> You 
> must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this 
> License with every copy or phonorecord of the Work"

Rik, the license contains the terms on which the copyright holder (ie
for most purposes the author) authorises other people to use the work.
By definition the license cannot prevent the copyright holder from
granting other licenses. 

That particular term of the CC license is saying "if you distribute this
work under this license you must use the same license and say so". Thats
what the "share-alike" part of "share-alike-attribution" means. It means
"if you share it, you must do so on the same terms that I do".

It doesn't, and cannot, stop the copyright holder/author from allowing
it to be used under another license, such as the GFDL. 

A copyright license grants the licensee the right to do something that
would otherwise be illegal, in this case distribute, display/perform
publicly etc. It doesn't affect the right of the copyright holder, who
keeps all the rights he previously had, including the right to license
it on other terms, sell it, attribute it to his dog, whatever!

Oh and BTW AFAIK the CLUG wiki is under version 2.0 of the CC-SA
license, not version 2.5.

-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>