Choosing a License

26 Jan 2017

I have decided to license this site as CC BY-SA 4.0. Here was my thought process.

What Would Stallman Do?

I’ve never chosen a license for a non-software creative work before. The go-to resource for free software licensing is the Free Software Foundation. What license do they use for their site? CC BY-ND 4.0. This license does not allow derivative works, which means that the FSF does not consider it a free license. So what gives?

You can find their reasoning here. The relevant excerpt:

Works that express someone’s opinion—memoirs, editorials, and so on—serve a fundamentally different purpose than works for practical use like software and documentation. Because of this, we expect them to provide recipients with a different set of permissions: just the permission to copy and distribute the work verbatim. Richard Stallman discusses this frequently in his speeches.

I can understand that, but it still doesn’t seem right to license this site in such a way. A nonfree license is a tool of discouragement, and I want to encourage people to view and use my work and thoughts.

Let’s see what the FSF has to say about CC BY-SA 4.0.

This is a copyleft free license that is good for artistic and entertainment works, and educational works.

Copyleft is good; modified versions of open works should be open. Is my work educational? Sure, let’s go with that.

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