changing content licenses (OPL => CC BY SA)

Karsten Wade kwade at redhat.com
Thu Jun 25 19:22:53 UTC 2009


On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 12:03:34PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On 06/25/2009 11:49 AM, Jon Stanley wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Tom "spot"
> > Callaway<tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> So, we should just go ahead and get permission from all the contributors
> >> (writers and translators) to relicense their works, and if anyone does
> >> not give permission, we should remove/replace their contribution.
> > 
> > How does this work for defunct accounts? For example, I made a
> > contribution and then disappeared - my email address doesn't work, for
> > example.
> 
> We make every effort to track down that person, and if it is ultimately
> impossible, we remove their contribution(s) from the "CC-BY-SA" licensed
> version of the document(s).

To be honest, I presumed we would use the CLA's nuclear option here
and just relicense.

When we went from GFDL to OPL we specifically had to ask everyone
because none of the content works were under the Fedora CLA.  The
stated reasoning at the time iirc was, we wouldn't have to do this
check with everyone again if we had to relicense because we had the
CLA.

So I get what you are saying, and I don't think we can do it.  The
amount of time it will take is huge, especially for the wiki.  It's
possible we could do it for the pure content guides, but we'd have to
ensure that none of the content was tainted from the wiki.

People reference bad publicity or a backlash if we just relicense
under the CLA terms.  Did Wikipedia contact every author/editor, only
relicense their content if they approve, and remove the content if
they did not approve?

My argument is that the moving from a broken license to one that puts
us clearly in the largest pool of open content commons is worth the
unintended consequences of using the CLA's hammer.  Isn't that what it
is for?

If we must contact each contributor, who have already clearly put
their content under the CLA that clearly gives Fedora the right to
adjust the licensing as needed, then I'm concerned the effort won't
get done.  It's an extremely non-trivial effort.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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