I relicensed.
November 17, 2009 – 5:22 pm
I did something today I should have done a while back: relicensed all my blog and website content under CC-BY-SA. It previously included a noncommercial clause, but after reading a discussion that included a link to “The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License” (I believe the link came from Rahul – thanks, Rahul!) I went “whoa, I haven’t actually thought about this before – crud, this makes my website incompatible with… FIX! FIX!”
My site and blog content are now compatible with the Fedora wiki, itself recently relicensed. (And many other things as well.)
3 Responses to “I relicensed.”
I’ve been struggling with this for a while and have let apathy work for my inability to decide.
The problem I have is, the stuff I mostly say on my blog is my opinion. I’m not sure I want to allow derivatives, for example.
I think of it like an advanced form of talking on a mailing list. We don’t license the content in a mailing list discussion. If something from there should be put in e.g. the release notes, then we get permission to put it on the wiki (i.e., under the CC BY SA 3.0 Unported.)
Until that point, I don’t see it as a contribution. In fact, I don’t want to always make contributions to the commons with everything I say, at least, not automatically.
FWIW, I’ve been pushing the non-NC thing for some time, using the argument from the article you provided. What I do instead is leave my work unlicensed with plain copyright. I can always license it from there, and in fact, have copied content from my blog posts in to projects as actual contributions. I wouldn’t ever put it under an NC, largely for the reasons in the freedomdefined.org article.
I’m still open to thinking about this, clearly I haven’t decided yet.
Obviously I don’t have a problem with producing free content, but I’m equally unsure that everything I say has to have the same level of freedom. I am free to hold my opinion and say it. I’m just not yet sure I am ready to give others unfettered rights to my opinion to do with as they see fit.
I don’t see “opinion” addressed in the freedomdefined.org article. I think that is the clear reason the GFDL has all the troubling, non-free clauses to keep from having one’s opinion turned against itself.
In other words, I’m not sure if my opinion is content and worth reusing!
But I get the point that I cannot predict what uses my opinion might have, now or in the future, and leaving it unlicensed may mean I leave the world with less usefulness from me.
By Karsten Wade on Nov 17, 2009
absolutely, absolutely!
By axet on Nov 17, 2009