Re: DRAFT summary of the CC-by, feedback requested (original) (raw)

Here are some comments on the draft summary: I think I'd make these changes

It is likely that Creative Commons does not intend this to be a Free "quite possible"? I'm not sure about "likely". license in the sense of the DFSG. However, since requiring attribution and credit is acceptable under the DFSG this summary was written to point out the other problems with this license. Good sentence. :-)

• Credit to original author(s) must be as prominently displayed, and in the same location, as credit to any other author. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). It's not actually clear exactly what it requires due to the "comparable"

authorship credits phrase. I would say "It appears (although it's slightly unclear) that credit to the original author(s)..."

• When any Licensor asks, their name(s) must be purged from the work. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). Probably you should note that this is "all references" to their names.
• Use of the "Creative Commons" trademark (or related trademark or logo) is apparently a license violation, and thus grounds for a copyright "appears to be a license violation"? At this point we think that it actually isn't, but it still appears to be when one reads the license. :-P holder to revoke the license. This violates the "Tentacles of Evil" test[1] and can remove all freedoms the license grants.

Suggestions:

As the copyright holder you could use another license like the GPL or 2-clause BSD. These licenses are substantially different, though, so you should take care to understand the license before you make a choice. If someone's planning to use the CC-by license, 2-clause BSD seems to be the closest fit among the standard licenses, so I'd just recommend that, not GPl. The clause mentioned in the final point above (dealing with the Creative Commons trademark) is possibly not intended to be part of the license at "probably" not intended all, as when view in the original HTML with an appropriate browser it That should be "when viewed" has a different color. different background color And when the HTML source is viewed, there is an HTML comment indicating that it is "not part of the license". Making this distinction explicitly and in text form as well as HTML would solve this problem.