I’m an aspiring author, building a novel under CC BY-SA (it’s in french). My wish is to make it some kind of framework for others to be allowed to build more stories, or modify mine and redistribute freely, even commercially.
I don’t plan on making a living from it, there’s no way it could happen (although being paid should not be incompatible with free licenses, but that’s another discussion). The thing is, when I think about the attribution part of the license I’m choosing, I often think it’s too restrictive and should be public domain instead, if my work is really meant to be an open narrative framework.
What are your takes on the attribution license, regarding free licenses for cultural content, especially written content ?
(I’m french so if there are any french speaking people around here, feel free to answer in another language than english)
Just so you know, Creative Commons offers CC0, a license that is basically public domain.
Personally, for the majority of my non-software works, i always prefer CC BY-SA.
It’s a libre license that allows just enough freedoms to anyone, without allowing some people to take the same freedoms away from others (when they create a so-called derivate work from my own work).
My entire website for example, meaning HTML/CSS code, written articles and other pages, as well as any included media, is released under CC BY-SA.
There are some other people who use CC NC (fair enough, although I find it too vague as a license) or, especially for written stuff like a blog, CC ND (their argument is that works of opinion don’t need modifications, which I genuinely don’t understand), but I like to act the same way I would like for anyone else in the world to act, and that’s why I go with CC BY-SA.
You say that CC BY-SA is too restrictive because of the Attribution part, but not the Share-Alike one, so I guess that we have the same view on "derivative works must not take freedoms away from others… If so, I really have no idea what to suggest you, because CC0 has no Share-Alike obligation.
If I was you, I would stick with CC BY-SA :p
I agree and would also stick with that. Having public domain / CC0 could mean that a commercial entity (or anyone really) republishes parts or all of your work as if it were their own without any mention of original author. And they’d be in their right to do so.
I can totally relate. I have already tried to find a solution to this problem in the past and failed, sadly. What I need is CC SA (without BY) licence. CC0 is too permissive and CC BY-SA too restrictive in some cases for my use. Time for a new licence (just joking).
There used to be a CC SA only license, but it was droped (due to the author oriented set of mind of the copyright legal framework I guess).
Yeah, I believe I have seen something about that a while ago. It makes sense, in a way. I personally would not mind if my name was omitted, but I truly want to make sure my work remains libre and copyleft. And as you explain in another comment, there needs to be a person holding the rights to be able to properly apply legal restrictions of the licence on the work. Oh, well, CC BY-SA will have to do.