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@dos @dpk well the joke is that it's as permissive/lax of a license as the most permissive/lax license in effect, but most lax licenses aren't lax because they can be relicensed, they still ordinarily operate under the terms of the original license, unless there's a specific clause for relicensing
But GPLv3 "or later" has the challenge where you have to trust the FSF, and that does have that challenge (and I did mean to evoke thoughts about that)
License upgrade stewardship is a tough problem
"Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns."
"Later license versions may give you additional or different permissions. However, no additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a later version."
That's not much wiggle room without risking legal uncertainty. 🤷♀️ I'm ok with that.
Wikipedia was licensed under the GFDL, and that was before CC BY-SA was available as the world's most popular copyleft license for cultural works. How to relicense with so many contributors?
So... Creative Commons, Wikimedia, and the Free Software Foundation collaborated on adding a new version of the GFDL that allowed for relicensing to CC BY-SA if it were done within a short time window to allow Wikipedia to do it
As someone who was present at the drafting of the GFDL, and someone who thinks CC-BY-SA is not actually a #copyleft license, I think Wikipedia picked the correct evil of two lessers.
GFDL was a peace treaty between RMS & Tim O'Reilly written in the form of a license.
CC-BY-SA is copyleft designed by libertarians.
True copyleft must allow reproducibility from first principles. CC-BY-SA doesn't.
In the case of #Wikipedia, though, printed copies should always offer &/or be accompanied with electronic copies. Wikipedia should really be under copyleft and it's not.
After all, paper printout is but a rudimentary form of DRM.
I'm not saying CC-BY-SA is useless and shouldn't exist, I'm saying there is no #copyleft in the CC license group. CC even used to encourage photographers license scaled versions CC-BY-SA & keep high quality images proprietary.
Cc: @cwebber @wikipedia @dos @dpk
But a fun fact about me: before I worked on decentralized network tech stuff (and partly during it), I used to work on the tech team (at one point tech lead) at Creative Commons, and went deep in the weeds on many FOSS / free cultural licensing things
I have much too cursed knowledge about these things because of it
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