Can I create a TW based product with a CC licence?

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello,

Basically that is my Question. Can I create a tool based on TiddlyWiki with a Creative Commons licence?

Is it compatible with MIT licence? Does MIT licence have any advantage? Should I do something special to use the CC licence?

Sorry to ask something that maybe is obvious, but I have no experience about licences.

[PMario]

Hi Danielo,

I'm not a Lawyer, so the following text represent my understanding / opinion and may be wrong.

------- Some Info -------

TiddlyWiki uses the 3 clause BSD license [1]. It is a very permissive license. So you can do almost everything if the 3 clauses are met. Since the license text is hardcoded into TW, you basically don't need a separate tiddler with the license. .. But a link that mentions it from your license will help.

MIT license [2] is even more permissive.
 - With BSD you must include the copyright notice.
 - With MIT you shall include the copyright notice.

So you can include any MIT licensed SW into TW and declare your Software is BSD licensed, because that's allowed. ... but you can not change BSD to MIT, if you use 3rd party BSD software. .... If you are the copyright holder (you wrote the SW) you can do whatever you want :)

CC - Creative Commons [3] is a set of licenses and tools [4] to create them. CC can be used for software and prose text.
With CC you can create very permissive licenses eg: CC-BY [5] and you can create very restrictive license eg: CC-BY-NC-SA [6]

Creative Commons licenses are easy to build.

CC .. Creative Commons
BY .. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit
NC .. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
SA .. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

---------- Your question: Can I create a tool based on TiddlyWiki with a Creative Commons licence?

Yes. You can create a tool based on TiddlyWiki, as long as you comply to the BSD license for TW itself.
Plugins may have there own licenses eg: BSD, MIT, CC-BY ... shown in the control panel

Your own content can be CC-...... whatever you like.

So you can create a prominent link to a License Tiddler with contains the info about the used licenses.

eg:

 - TiddlyWiki uses a BSD license
 - Plugin licenses can be seen at the $:/ControlPanel
 - If not stated otherwise the content of this TW is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;

The above is just an example.

-----------------

Wikipedia uses CC-BY-SA

-------------------

With TW it is possible that every tiddler can have its own license. .. This isn't very convenient, .. but it's possible.

hope that helps
have fun!
mario

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License
[3] http://creativecommons.org/
[4] http://creativecommons.org/choose/
[5] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
[6] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
[7] BSD template: http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

[PMario]

IMO There is one more thing, that is important.

If you published your content with a very permissive eg: BSD license you are pretty much nailed to it. ... Since the internet doesn't forget anything. ...

an example:

 - If you publish your content with MIT
 - I download it. I have it
 - The next day you publish it with CC-BY-SA ... That's possible --- BUT
 - I do own a valid MIT licensed version, with which I can do what I want.

So it's very easy to make a license more permissive but the other way around is hard.

have fun!
mario

[Ed Dixon]

My take on this is pretty much the same as Mario's would just add it is important to make sure you attribute the content from its source if other than your own, understand that regardless of what you may add to the material you can not change that license, that license is also applied to your efforts,  and also make it apparent preferably using the proper cc logos and emblems for that particular cc license that the material is cc and where it is available. TiddlyWiki's license does not override or change the cc license of the material it contains. But, as Mario said I am no lawyer either, but maybe that helps?  

Can not wait to see what you may be working on can you make any of the upcoming hangouts?

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Mario,

Thanks a lot for this most comprehensive wrap-up of a complicex topic.

Best wishes, Tobias.

[Tobias Beer]

My take on this is pretty much the same as Mario's would just add it is important to make sure you attribute the content from its source if other than your own, understand that regardless of what you may add to the material you can not change that license, that license is also applied to your efforts

That last statement doesn't seem to be (generally) true. Nothing prevents using public content in closed source, unless explicitly prohibited.

Best wishes, Tobias.

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello Mario,

Thank you very much for your explanation! It is a very good summary.

Basically what I want to achieve is attribution, non-commercial use and free to distribute. That's why I choose the CC licence (and because it's cool logo). Maybe It's better to use BSD for my purposes? How should I include BSD licence? For CC it's very easy, I just include the logo and a link to the license and that's all. Is something similar for BSD?

[Ed Dixon]

@Tobias Can you provide a little more detail about what is untrue about that statement? I may not have been clear, in that I am referring to any additions or changes that someone would make to the cc'd license material used and not anything else such as tiddlywiki or the plugins used to deliver it?

On Thu Feb 12 2015 at 1:00:23 AM Danielo Rodríguez <rdan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Mario,

Thank you very much for your explanation.

Basically what I want to achieve is attribution, non-commercial use and free to distribute. That's why I choose the CC licence (and because it's cool logo). Maybe It's better to use BSD for my purposes? How should I include BSD licence?

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[PMario]

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 9:00:19 AM UTC+1, Danielo Rodríguez wrote:

Thank you very much for your explanation! It is a very good summary.

you are welcome.
 

Basically what I want to achieve is attribution, non-commercial use and free to distribute.

So this one would be CC-BY-NC   ... which is a relatively restrictive license.

AS I wrote. Changing it to CC-BY which imo is very similar to BSD is easy and can be done at any times.
 

That's why I choose the CC licence (and because it's cool logo).

If you just want to license your content. IMO CC is preferable. BSD was developed for software. CC also has prose text in mind.
 

Maybe It's better to use BSD for my purposes? How should I include BSD licence?

Have a look a the template. It's about 15 lines. So including it in a tiddler is simple.
Since BSD has the "must" clause for the copyright attribution you need to create the copyright text.
 

For CC it's very easy, I just include the logo and a link to the license and that's all. Is something similar for BSD?

not really, since you need a personalised copyright notice.

-mario

[Ed Dixon]

Hi Danielo,

Realizing now you are referring to your own material and what you wish that license to provide, I also agree with Mario about using a creative commons license especially if it is being done as an educational effort.

Thanks

--

[PMario]

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 8:59:07 AM UTC+1, Tobias Beer wrote:

My take on this is pretty much the same as Mario's would just add it is important to make sure you attribute the content from its source if other than your own, understand that regardless of what you may add to the material you can not change that license, that license is also applied to your efforts

That last statement doesn't seem to be (generally) true. Nothing prevents using public content in closed source, unless explicitly prohibited.

IMO that's not true, since most countries have automatic copyright laws for published content. ... So you can use anything in your closed source, but this doesn't prevent you from being sued, if your SW is famous and earns a lot of money. Or even if you earn nothing at all.

My content is mine, there is no need for copyright notice. That's the reason, why it makes sense to add a license statement. A license make it clear, how my content should be reused. ... or not.

have fun!
mario

[Danielo Rodríguez]

El jueves, 12 de febrero de 2015, 10:33:08 (UTC+1), Ed Dixon escribió:

Hi Danielo,

Realizing now you are referring to your own material and what you wish that license to provide, I also agree with Mario about using a creative commons license especially if it is being done as an educational effort.

Well, in this case it is a piece of software. I would love to knob about the CC before, because I have some prose content that can benefit from it. But I think the CC license will work fine for both cases.

Thank you both. 

[Tobias Beer]

@Tobias Can you provide a little more detail about what is untrue about that statement? I may not have been clear, in that I am referring to any additions or changes that someone would make to the cc'd license material used and not anything else such as tiddlywiki or the plugins used to deliver it?

Using something with a license does not by default force you to subscribe to the same license in whatever you offer based on it. The license needs to explicitly state that... which thus limits its use to those who actually do or can subscribe to such a limiting licensing model.

If TiddlyWiki is BSD then I am not compelled to also subscribe to BSD with whatever I create with it. I shall respect the BSD license of TiddlyWiki, but it does not at all automatically extend to my own creations. Otherwise there would hardly be a chance to merge things with conflicting licenses in one product.

Best wishes, Tobias.

[Ed Dixon]

I see, I was referring to the creative commons license not TiddlyWiki and do admit I much prefer BSD because of its utility over others. Creative Commons is designed more for educational resources; books, video, things like that, that could be included in a TiddlyWiki. I had never really thought about the merger in terms of licensing before but yea TiddlyWiki's BSD license should resolve any issues in using cc materials provided the cc license of those materials are followed, I would think. I suppose to accurately define and in the case of creative common materials included the developer / author would need to attribute the work and provide at least the cc license (best BSD also?) with the end product.

I know I plan to use the ribbon pointing to our TiddlyWiki site (as well as license inclusion) and list the plugins and authors of those used on anything I do using it, out of respect if nothing else for all the effort Jeremy and the rest of this community ( and you are a huge part of that) have put into all of this.

Thanks for explaining I was definitely lost :)

On Thu Feb 12 2015 at 4:58:54 AM Tobias Beer <beert...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Tobias Can you provide a little more detail about what is untrue about that statement? I may not have been clear, in that I am referring to any additions or changes that someone would make to the cc'd license material used and not anything else such as tiddlywiki or the plugins used to deliver it?

Using something with a license does not by default force you to subscribe to the same license in whatever you offer based on it. The license needs to explicitly state that... which thus limits its use to those who actually do or can subscribe to such a limiting licensing model.

If TiddlyWiki is BSD then I am not compelled to also subscribe to BSD with whatever I create with it. I shall respect the BSD license of TiddlyWiki, but it does not extend to my own creations.

Best wishes, Tobias.