[freeroleplay] Re: Descriptive vs. Proscriptive
- From: Ricardo Gladwell <president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:59:45 +0100
Samuel Penn wrote:
Complicated? I'm not sure I understand...
Apologies, this would seem to be a misunderstanding on my part: my point
was in reply to the issue raised earlier about complexity, probably not
made by you.
Scarily, the OGL may come closest to this (since it allows mixing
of closed and open content).
Don't scare me, Sam! The dark side is powerful, but it corrupts
absolutely. ;)
For example, if a list of equipment descriptions or character
descriptions is licensed under the GPL (or CC), can that list
be included in a book under a different license as long as
source for the free content is provided along with the book?
My understanding is that it can't.
I can appreciate the above in which case I can see now why you decided
to use the BSD license for it. In the above case, I would agree that the
GPL probably wouldn't allow you to aggregate a work like that without
the rest being GPL'd. I believe the CCPL has some provisions for
aggregating work but last time I read them I didn't understand them and
I don't understand them now.
I would argue that your choices are to use the BSD License or public
domain. Or, you could multi-license under all possible content licenses
(possibly a little confusing). I would definitely argue that public
domain is better than OGL any day of the week, even without copyleft.
I'm not sure I agree with the Debian take on things (several of the
bits they describe as 'unclear' seem clear to me, and other bits
they want changed I interpret in the way they want it changed to
say anyway - but I'm not a Lawyer, and not used to thinking about
things in a legal sense).
Fair enough, although I do think the debian-legal make several good
points. It may become a non-issue soon: according to debian-legal the CC
are taking on board these points and will hopefully incorporate them in
the CCPL 3 licenses.
I'm also more in the Open Source rather than Free Software camp,
which means I'm more flexible about licenses than Debian may be,
so the bits where I do agree with them about changing the CC
license is more a preference than a requirement on my part.
I would argue that the CC isn't open source either, seeing as it
probably does not meet the OSI's Open Source Definition either (the
Debian Free Software Definition is based on the OSD so what applies for
one probably applies for both in most cases). As I stated before, the
OSI may actually be more strict about licenses than the FSF.
Kind regards...
--
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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