Christine Lemmer-Webber
The Any FOSS License License
This software is available under the terms of any license that currently appears on the list of approved open source licenses published by the Open Source Initiative or the list of approved free software licenses published by the Free Software Foundation.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I am not suggesting you use this "license", I am potentially making a point, or potentially making no point at all
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@dos @dpk well the joke is that it's as permissive/lax of a license as the most permissive/lax license in effect, but most lax licenses aren't lax because they can be relicensed, they still ordinarily operate under the terms of the original license, unless there's a specific clause for relicensing
But GPLv3 "or later" has the challenge where you have to trust the FSF, and that does have that challenge (and is meant to evoke thoughts about that)
License upgrade stewardship is a tough problem.
Sebastian Krzyszkowiak
@dpk @cwebber There's no need for any takeover, there are licenses on these lists that let you freely relicense to anything you want already.
Daphne Preston-Kendal
@cwebber Great idea until Stallman dies and the FSF gets taken over by the Crown Prince of Korea, who thinks the Business Source Licence is great and they should approve it
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@dos @dpk However, there's another joke in here about the *mutability* of this license choice: what happens if a license is *removed* from the list? By saying "currently" as opposed to "which appeared at any time", it's creating a challenge: it's not an append-only set, it could end up in strange places if something got removed
aeva
@cwebber as a FOSS purist, personally I prefer The Every FOSS License License https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/113766050886883162
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@log I'm not sure a cycle would be harmful here but it's fun to think about it being one
Log 🪵
@cwebber Why did my alarm for potential circular reference go off? Better add "any other license that currently appears" and "except this license" in there somewhere. Some of us would be puckish enough to add an all-license metalicense to one of the incorporated-by-reference lists.
Log 🪵
@cwebber I wouldn't want to trap a lawyer in an infinite loop while they're acceuing billable hours.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@log especially if the lawyer didn't support tail call elimination
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@dos @dpk Just wait till you find out about how Wikipedia relicensed from the GFDL to CC BY-SA
Sebastian Krzyszkowiak
@cwebber @dpk Courts operate not just on the license's letter, but also its spirit, so taking over FSF to publish a permissive GPLv4 wouldn't necessarily be as effective as it may seem at first glance - even if it would still cause plenty of chaos. In contrast, the spirit of this joke license is pretty much "an overly complex way to say it's MIT-0/0BSD" - that is, unless a court decides otherwise, judging from the whole context around a particular case and particular people involved ;)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@dos @dpk And if you don't know, here's from memory what happened:
Wikipedia was licensed under the GFDL, and that was before CC BY-SA was available as the world's most popular copyleft license for cultural works. How to relicense with so many contributors?
So... Creative Commons, Wikimedia, and the Free Software Foundation collaborated on adding a new version of the GFDL that allowed for relicensing to CC BY-SA if it were done within a short time window to allow Wikipedia to do it
Daphne Preston-Kendal
@cwebber @dos It was even more brazen than that: they allowed only *online wikis* to relicense within the time window
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@dos @dpk Source: from memory.
But a fun fact about me: before I worked on decentralized network tech stuff (and partly during it), I used to work on the tech team (at one point tech lead) at Creative Commons, and went deep in the weeds on many FOSS / free cultural licensing things
I have much too cursed knowledge about these things because of it
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@log in fact i think "except this license" would actually introduce the recursive failure of the license case, would it be added, because it could no longer be valid under its own terms
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@bkuhn @dos @dpk I think copyleft with source-requirement is good, though I'm not convinced it's viable for all places where CC BY-SA is useful for. For example, distributing raw film footage and editing files for some videos isn't really necessary and may be an unnecessary burden if you think about much of the video content out there today, so having a weaker version of "copyleft" is sensible to me. I would be fine with a different term for it though.
Bradley M. Kuhn
As someone who was present at the drafting of the GFDL, and someone who thinks CC-BY-SA is not actually a #copyleft license, I think Wikipedia picked the correct evil of two lessers.
GFDL was a peace treaty between RMS & Tim O'Reilly written in the form of a license.
CC-BY-SA is copyleft designed by libertarians.
True copyleft must allow reproducibility from first principles. CC-BY-SA doesn't.
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
Richard Fontana
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@richardfontana well there we go
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
Bradley M. Kuhn
In the case of #Wikipedia, though, printed copies should always offer &/or be accompanied with electronic copies. Wikipedia should really be under copyleft and it's not.
After all, paper printout is but a rudimentary form of DRM.
I'm not saying CC-BY-SA is useless and shouldn't exist, I'm saying there **is no** #copyleft in the CC license group. CC even used to encourage photographers license scaled versions CC-BY-SA & keep high quality images proprietary.
Cc: @cwebber @wikipedia @dos @dpk
Bradley M. Kuhn
Remember, @lanodan, that an exclusive rights holder (e.g., a copyright holder) always has the permission to issue any material under any license (or many different licenses) or not.
This is what allows “proprietary relicensing” to happen at all.
That sad, the other part of your analysis **is** correct: CC-BY-SA permits me to take a high-res image you give me, modify it, reduce it to low res, and refuse to share the modified high-res image with anyone.
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