[Bf-docboard] No Choice of License

[Chris Burt]

No offense Roger, but none of your examples/analogies really apply to
the situation you're trying to describe. The licenses for the content
on the Wiki, according to Matt's post, would be specified by their
author, not the Blender Foundation. This would mean that if I wanted
to publish a public domain tutorial on rigging, I'd be free to do so,
but if I wanted to publish a creative commons share-alike
non-commercial tutorial on the same topic, I'd have that freedom as
well. There are aaaaallllll sorts of different kinds of "free" and
"open" that contributors should be encouraged to take advantage of in
my opinion. Restricting the Wiki to one license discourages the
sharing of material across the boundaries of amateur and professional,
something that the Blender community has been reasonably good at.

I think the original concern is over scripts and code snippets
published to the wiki, and protecting the rights of the authors of
those materials despite them being published in a Wiki with a
dissimilar license. But I didn't read the whole thread.

--Chris

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 8:44 AM, Roger Wickes <rogerwickes at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This docboard post suggests that scripts hosted in the wiki Scripts folder
> and subfolders be provided under non-GPL licesnes, specficially "a choice of
> GPL, LGPL, BSD and zlib licenses:.
>
> I am against a choice of licensing standards.No one has put forth any
> business reason why it makes sense otherwise.
>
> I'm very sorry, but I think the suggestion that there be a variety of
> choices of "license of the month" is totally unacceptable. If any software
> is supported by the Blender Foundation, either through the resources used to
> house and distribute it (the wiki), or community member's time to add it,
> then it must all fall under the same license as the Blender software itself.
> It's like saying, here, have this toy Buzz Lightyear. You can play all you
> want with his left and right legs, but the arms you cannot turn to the left,
> and you cannot rip off the head and use it to make another toy. Oh, and you
> can put him on your desk at work, but you have to take out the batteries
> because you cannot play with him at work.
>
> If you want to make money from Blender, write the code, lock it down,
> advertise it and sell it...but don't expect BF to distribute it for you and
> open itself up to license administration and possible damages! Imagine
> coming across a page in the User Manual with a banner at the top that says
> "Do not read this if you use Blender professionally. Free use of this
> content is restricted to amateurs. If you later become a professional and
> you learned something from reading this page, send $2 to Joe Schmoe as a
> license fee." Another anaology is that you make a wooden toy in your garage.
> You give it to your neighbor and ask him to sell it at his garage sale, but
> with the following restrictions...etc etc. Imagine the mess that could
> result!
>
> Another analogy is Blender itself. Imagine if you could use Blender for
> professional paid work, but not cloth. If you used cloth, you had to send
> Genscher $.01 for every frame that was rendered using the cloth sim. Not
> only does it violate the spirit of Blender, it is impossible to administer
> (enforce, collect, track).
>
> I am going to cc Ton on this, because maybe I am off-base. But, as president
> of BF, I think he needs to be aware and give us some guidance. Perhaps it
> will warrant discussion on our Sunday meeting.
> ----------------
> Sent by Roger Wickes for intended recipient. If you are not the intended
> recipient, please delete this message and contact Mr. Wickes immediately.
>
> Atlantica Investments, Inc.
> PO Box 680310, Marietta, GA 30068 USA
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "bf-docboard-request at blender.org" <bf-docboard-request at blender.org>
> To: bf-docboard at blender.org
> Sent: Sunday, June 8, 2008 6:00:20 AM
> Subject: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 41, Issue 7
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>   1. Re: Script Licensing (joe)
>
>
> -----Inline Message Follows-----
>
>> Hrm.  You could try contacting some admins.  We went with OCL because the
>> manual is OCL, and it seemed to make sense (as back then the wiki was
>> primarily for user documentation/developer documents).
>
> Right, it was all about the old 2.3 manual, which was OCL. Anyway, is
> there any reason at all why the contents of the entire wiki must be
> licensed the same? Why not just state: 'open content, unless otherwise
> stated on the page itself' or even something more restrictive like:
> 'open content, unless otherwise declared as GPL on the page itself' or
> 'open content, with the exception of GPL for all contained
> program/script code'
>
> Matt
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>
> GPL sounds like an overly restrictive license for every script though
> (especially little cookbook scripts).  What about a choice of GPL, LGPL, BSD
> and zlib licenses?
>
> Joe
>
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 6:24 PM, Matt Ebb <matt at mke3.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 4:53 AM, joe <joeedh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hrm.  You could try contacting some admins.  We went with OCL because
>> > the
>> > manual is OCL, and it seemed to make sense (as back then the wiki was
>> > primarily for user documentation/developer documents).
>>
>> Right, it was all about the old 2.3 manual, which was OCL. Anyway, is
>> there any reason at all why the contents of the entire wiki must be
>> licensed the same? Why not just state: 'open content, unless otherwise
>> stated on the page itself' or even something more restrictive like:
>> 'open content, unless otherwise declared as GPL on the page itself' or
>> 'open content, with the exception of GPL for all contained
>> program/script code'
>>
>> Matt
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