[wp-docs] Codex license: CC better than GPL?

Lloyd Budd lloydomattic at gmail.com
Wed Feb 27 19:22:00 GMT 2008


On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Alex Günsche <ag.ml2008 at zirona.com> wrote:
>
> I agree that Public Domain is very open and flexible, but you won't find
>  too many people who are willing to provide their work PD. ;)

I don't think that is necessarily true, but that raises the most
interesting questions to consider any changes.  How many authors are
there of the codex, and do a reasonable number of authors represent
almost all of the work.


>  Besides, PD
>  is not legally possible in a number of jurisdictions, including Germany
>  and France. However, MIT or BSD license are also good choices, similar
>  to PD.

There are ways around that in each of those jurisdictions. I believe
either creativecommons.org have completed work in this area, or are
currently working on it.


>  (By the way, I wasn't able to find out whether WordPress itself is
>  licensed "GPLv2 only" or "GPLv2 or later". The readme.html only says:
>  "WordPress is released under the GPL (see license.txt)", and license.txt
>  is the GPL v2. I wonder if this is intentional, or Matt just forgot to
>  include the precise statement.)

WordPress is licensed GPL version 2, because as you say the license
doesnt' have a or later clause.


On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Alex Günsche <ag.ml2008 at zirona.com> wrote:
>  Not necessarily. First, the GPL also requires you to give detailed
>  attribution to contributions and modifications ("You must cause the
>  modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the
>  files and the date of any change.", GPLv2, 1 a)

GPL is a license of sources, whereas as, as I suggested, CC licenses
depending on how the attribution is required impacts the experience of
the derivative work.


Dual licensing seems like a pretty good compromise, but it is hard for
me to get excited about this type of discussion, because any
resolution is very labor intensive,
Lloyd


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