Comment Re:understanding the GPL (Score 1) 8
I find the GPL readable. In any case, this post doesn't ask about the GPL. It asks about the GFDL.
Comment do you want copyleft or not? (Score 2, Interesting) 8
The GFDL and CC-BY are rather different licenses. The first is a copyleft license (requires adaptations to be distributed under the same license), the latter is a permissive license (do anything you want so long as you give credit, roughly).
If you don't want copyleft, CC-BY is your choice.
If you do want copyleft, it would make sense to choose between GFDL and CC-BY-SA, which you can think of as the copyleft version of CC-BY. Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia sites) migrated from the GFDL to CC-BY-SA as their primary content license in June, see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15411
Thanks for not considering a more restrictive license.
License For Textbooks — GNU FDL Or CC? 8
An anonymous reader writes 'I'm a college professor who is putting together an open-source textbook. I'm trying to decide between using the GNU Free Documentation License or the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. I don't really understand the difference between these, though it seems with the Free Documentation License I need to include a copy of the license in my text. Which do you advise using?'
Comment Re:Who cares? (Score 1) 82
My business plan is to not think about abicollab again until I hear that the server component is FLOSS. :-)
Submission + - AcaWiki, a "Wikipedia for academic knowledge" (acawiki.org)
mlinksva writes: "AcaWiki, a project to crowd curate summaries of academic research, has launched (press release). Started by Neeru Paharia, one of the first employees of Creative Commons, AcaWiki aims to make accessible via summarization some of the knowledge the Open Access movement has yet to free and to offer a view on any papers, even Open Access ones, that is comprehensible to non-specialists. The site runs on MediaWiki with the Semantic MediaWiki extension and all content is available under the most liberal CC Attribution license."
Submission + - Wikipedia CC BY-SA Rollout Underway (wikimedia.org)
mlinksva writes: "After years of work by the Wikimedia Foundation and Free Software Foundation, an overwhelming community vote and WMF board approval, the rollout of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike as the primary content license for Wikimedia sites has begun with English Wikipedia — see the site footer and ToU. I recently speculated about the potential impact (and how to measure it) of the licensing change on the growth of free culture."
Comment Noncompete agreements are the DRM of human capital (Score 2) 248
Submission + - Help Creative Commons figure out "noncommercia (creativecommons.org)
An anonymous reader writes: "Noncommercial" licenses are popular but controversial (for "content" — they're verboten for software). Creative Commons has undertaken a study on the subject and are looking for your input in a survey which runs through May 5. Simultaneously they've published an interim report from an earlier phase of the study with lots of interesting graphs concerning how people create and share online.
Submission + - Wikipedia does deal with Orange (wikimediafoundation.org)
David Gerard writes: "Wikipedia has done a deal with Orange, France Telecom's mobile brand in several European countries (France, UK, Poland and Spain). Orange gets Wikipedia content and gets to use the Wikipedia puzzle globe, the Wikimedia Foundation gets publicity and money. There's FAQ and a video (in French)."
Comment Re:Evidence please? (Score 1) 458
We can only expect the decline of RIAA member companies will lead to less advertising revenue.
Which is less important anyway since top100 gives RIAA member companies advertising gratis, even as they persecute filesharing. There's the irony.
Comment Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue! (Score 1) 458
Captain Obvious should not be oblivious to obvious irony, which is what the post is pointing out.
Comment Re:Flawed premise (Score 1) 458
filesharing has done nothing to break the hold of the major labels on the promotion and marketing of musical acts. As long as they can hold on to those, they will survive, and eventually they will figure out how to take advantage of the internet to make loads of money.
Indeed. Filesharing isn't going to break major label hold on our minds any more than sharing copies of Microsoft software was going to break that company's hold on our computers.
In the end, we'll have advertisements embedded into the hit singles, as part of the music and lyrics.
Yep, and if we're willing to look to other cultures, it's probably already happening, see http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2008/02/23/copypop/
Comment Re:Argh. This time with paragraphing (Score 1) 458
+1 mod parent up
Comment Re:Flawed premise (Score 1) 458
I don't think the premise is that filesharing should favor less known artists. The premise is that it is ironic that it favors major labels, ie some of the main entities trying to shut down filesharing. That is pretty ironic, no?
Comment Re:Flawed premise (Score 2, Informative) 458
TPB is a music (and other media) discovery service to the extent people look at its "top" pages.
Last.fm is of course much more interesting as a music discovery service. For those with concerns like the author of the post, check out http://libre.fm/
