Open Letter to Richard Stallman
Posted 4 Nov 2008 at 21:52 UTC by cdfrey
Dear Mr. Stallman,
I am writing to express my disappointment with the Free Software Foundation regarding the recent release of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3.
The new version 1.3 adds a new clause, section 11, which, according to the FAQ, allows wiki sites to relicense specific content from GFDL 1.3 to CC-BY-SA 3.0, for content added before November 1, 2008. They have this relicensing option until August 1, 2009.
This, in my view, is a serious moral mistake and breach of trust. Even if this new clause does no harm, it is still the wrong thing to do.
Many years ago, I read criticisms about the recommended way of applying the GNU GPL license to software. People criticized the common phrasing "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version," saying that this gave the FSF too much power, and was basically writing a blank cheque to possible future abuse of one's work.
This criticism began to hold less weight for me when I witnessed the extreme care and meticulous and open process of writing the new GPL version 3. All comments were logged and processed in a website in an extremely open fashion. The process was long and cautious, balancing the opinions of users of the license with the commitment to Free Software. It was a thing of beauty.
I started to see the benefits of having an open ended license. I saw the direction that the FSF took. They did not loosen the grip on Free Software principles, they tightened it. And since only the FSF could change the GPL, and given their trustworthy method used to update it, it seemed like a worthy place to put my trust.
Unfortunately, this seemingly hasty change to the GFDL undoes all that. Not only does it violate the assumption that the author of the work decides what license to use, it adds another party to the equation. Not only can the FSF now change the terms of the GFDL, the Creative Commons Corporation can now change the terms that some older GFDL work is licensed under.
Fortunately this only lasts until August 1, 2009. But old GFDL wiki content is basically dual licensed now.
Perhaps I was living under a legal rock, but I also didn't see any announcement for public input to this revision. If I did miss it, I regret not being able to give my feedback earlier in the process. If the input cycle was shorter or non-existent, this is a flaw in the update process of the GFDL, which I hope the FSF will fix.
In practical terms, the relicensing is not that big a deal. The restrictions on what can be relicensed are good, and it is basically swapping one set of legal boilerplate for another that does the same thing. Some authors may have specifically chosen the GFDL over CC-BY-SA, for various reasons, one of them being the fact that the license had to be copied along with the work. This part of the GFDL is both a feature and a bug. But this specific choice, which was previously up to the author, is now gone.
In the greater scheme of things, very little harm is probably done. Indeed, many have hailed this change as a great improvement. I suspect that the most harm is simply done to the FSF's reputation. The problem is the message this sends to users of other FSF licenses. Can we trust the FSF not to allow relicensing of our works, to non-FSF licenses, if we use the "future version" clause? In the past, I would have been confident that this was the case. Now I'm not so sure.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, and if you like, I will post your reply verbatim in the same places I post my letter.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Chris Frey
missing the point, posted 5 Nov 2008 at 00:41 UTC by jbuck » (Master)
The GFDL is widely considered a flawed license, and I doubt if you will be able to find actual copyright holders that used that license but that have a moral objection to CC-BY-SA. In fact, many contributors to GFDL documents object to the GFDL, but are pretty much forced to use it because they contribute to GNU projects. If anything, most of us were hoping for more changes, not fewer changes. We still have the invariant sections issue and the flawed DRM language (which would appear to be make "chmod 600 gfdl_doc.pdf" illegal on a multi-user system). Copyright holders who care about the legal details can specify a specific version number; those who care only that a work be free usually don't care about those details and are unlikely to care about the distinctions between GFDL with no invariant sections, and CC-BY-SA.
practical vs. principle, posted 5 Nov 2008 at 07:39 UTC by cdfrey » (Journeyer)
I agree that in a practical sense, little has changed, and in many cases CC-BY-SA is preferable. My concern was that this sets a bad precedent by allowing licensing control to pass from FSF to some other organization. I'm not slamming the Creative Commons Corp here, but the trust that people put into the "any later version" clause is directed at the FSF. I don't think that trust should be taken lightly. Lack of trust in the FSF regarding this clause causes things like the Linux kernel to be GPL v2 only. The FSF and the GNU project have historically been very strict about these things, requiring transfer of copyright, etc. This is why I'm surprised and disappointed about the change.
I would think more people support this move, a surprise on RMS's part because he is not a big egomaniac like some would think.
The logo of the GNU project 
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced a new version of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) which paves the way for the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) projects, including the popular Wikipedia, to switch to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) license. 
The logo of the Wikimedia Foundation 
The move was announced following discussions between the Wikimedia Foundation and the FSF.

Erik Möller, deputy director of the WMF, explained the reasoning behind this move. "The underlying motivation of this change is that CC-BY-SA is an easier-to-use license granting the same essential freedoms as the GFDL," he stated on the official Wikimedia blog. "It is also more widely used by other educational projects, and switching the license would allow Wikimedia wikis to freely share content with those projects."

Möller also state that "later this month, we will post a re-licensing proposal for all Wikimedia wikis which are currently licensed under the GFDL." 

The change was made in section eleven of the license. It says that conversion to CC-BY-SA is only possible if:
Logo of Creative Commons 
*The work is licensed under version free of the GFDL
*The work has no “Cover Texts” or “Invariant Sections.” 
*The work must have been added to a wiki, or a similar website, before November 1, 2008.

The condition of the license allows for conversion to the CC license before August 1, 2009, although after that date it will  no longer be possible. 

The Wikimedia Foundation formally decided to ask the FSF for the change in December 2007, with the approval of five of the six members of the Wikimedia board, with one member not voting.

Despite the support of the Wikimedia Foundation, some people have voiced their opposition to the move. On Advogato, Chris Frey sent an open letter to the chair of the FSF, Richard Stallman. "I am writing to express my disappointment with the Free Software Foundation regarding the recent release of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3," he stated. "The new version 1.3 adds a new clause, section 11, which, according to the FAQ, allows wiki sites to relicense specific content from GFDL 1.3 to CC-BY-SA 3.0, for content added before November 1, 2008. They have this relicensing option until August 1, 2009. This, in my view, is a serious moral mistake and breach of trust. Even if this new clause does no harm, it is still the wrong thing to do."