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

[Alex Günsche]

Hi all,

I wonder why the Codex is under the GPL. I know similar questions have
been discussed before on this list. But, as far as I know, the issue GPL
vs. CC has not been discussed. I also know that there are good reasons
for choosing the GPL, e.g. to be license-compliant with WP itself.

Anyway, I think that a code license such as the GPL is not well-suited
for documentary work. (I think this is obvious enough, so I don't
explain it further. But of course, we can discuss this. There are also
many related discussions to be found on the web.)

In my opinion, the CC-BY-SA license is equivalent to the intention of
the GPL, and it's a much better, because more precise and specific
license for a work such as the WP Codex.

Therefore, I'm proposing to relicense the Codex to the CC-BY-SA. Of
course, one cannot simply relicense other people's work. All
contributors of non-trivial content would have to agree, and the content
of those who didn't agree, would have to be removed.

Still, I think this is possible. Wikipedia itself had a similar problem
when they realized that they are stuck with the GFDL. And as far as I
know, Wikimedia has been able to perform a license update, despite the
fact that Wikipedia has *many* more contributors than the WP codex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Content_and_internal_structure
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update

What do you think, especially the main contributors?

NB: I'm not a lawyer, and although I'm quite familiar with copyright
legislations, I'm not at all an expert.

By the way, you might wonder why I'm proposing this; the reason is that
we are currently working on a new German documentation, and the GPL is
very bad to handle questions like translatabilty, or compatibility with
documentary work in other legislations than the US.


Best regards,
Alex

-- 
Alex Günsche, Zirona OpenSource-Consulting
Blogs: http://www.zirona.com/ | http://www.regularimpressions.net
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