On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 10:54:26PM -0400, David Nalley wrote: > I started thinking about the recent move of fp.o's content to CC-BY-SA > using the 'nuclear option.' for changing license. > > The proposed FPCA seems to eliminate license changes except for > explicitly unlicensed content. (as oxymoronic as explicitly unlicensed > sounds). So for instance, current Docs Projects are explicitly > licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported. In the event that CC-BY-SA 4.0 (or > $othercoolcontentlicenseinfavor) was 50% more awesome and we wanted to > move to it, it would seem that the 'nuclear option' for doing so would > not exist. > > So first, is my above understanding correct? > Second, if so, are we sure we want to give up the ability to change > wiki and documentation licensing. The draft FPCA is intended in large part to codify the Fedora Project interpretation of the existing Fedora CLA, as I think Spot pointed out. I suppose that what's different about Fedora documentation and wiki content is that Fedora publicized, and continues to publicize, the specific licensing policy for such content (OPL, and later CC-BY-SA). I think it would be better to clarify the distinction between inbound and outbound licensing in places like https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject#Documentation_licensing and https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Licenses#This_Website (I'll edit the first page). Given the established interpretation of the Fedora CLA by Fedora Legal, the 'nuclear option' was applied on the assumption that, regardless of such statements about licensing policy, documentation and wiki content contributions were, with rare exceptions, "Unlicensed" in the sense used in the FPCA and thus the contributor granted the broad copyright license "to Red Hat, Inc., on behalf of [Fedora], and to recipients of software distributed by [Fedora]". Thus, under the existing Fedora CLA, Red Hat (and, in fact, all other Fedora community members) had permission to license out most, if not all, docs contributions under the OPL, and under CC-BY-SA too. I don't think the fact that Fedora publicized its documentation licensing policy is inconsistent with the notion that contributors voluntarily kept their contributions "Unlicensed". So actually I think that if the draft FPCA had been in place all this time, but say with the OPL as the 'Default License' for content, Fedora would have been able to exercise the 'nuclear option' by designating a new Default License. Note BTW that CC-BY-SA 3.0 explicitly allows 'Adaptations' to be licensed under "a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License". . -- Richard E. Fontana Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel Red Hat, Inc. _______________________________________________ legal mailing list legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
