Open licenses: brief reminder
Free licenses are just tools for mankind to organize the framework of cooperation. Hence they impact on our practices as much as we impact on them and therefore there is a risk of preventing – or favoring – the appearance of new uses.
These free licenses base the legal support of a movement which we call " the free ".
There are several licenses, some more open than others, some more specific to certain, some more specific to types of works than others...
There are nearly a hundred ! Some standards are nevertheless imposed by organizations such as the Creative Commons Foundation and Open Source Initiative.
Two important licenses
The GNU GPL (General Public Licence)
It's the first free license. It appeared with the first free and open source software. Historically meant for software, it is getting more and more documented and its scope is expanding !
This licence allows 5 things :
1: the free right to use a program whatever the goal.
2: the free right to seek how the program works and how to adapt it to one's needs.
3: the free right to transfer the program to others and to make copies for others.
4: the free right to improve the program and to give free access to these improvements for the general benefit.
Freedom 2 and 4 implies an accessible source code.
This is of paramount importance but is not always the case with "application" via other licenses (like Creatives Commons licenses for example - see below)
Thus, it is compulsory to provide the "source code" of the work in a readable-by-all format and without constraint. Sharing "source code" in PDF format is not suitable here because it is not readable and cannot be copied without the possession of a particular program (not free itself)
And freedom 3 and 4 ignore author's rights as far as the author's explicit consent has not been asked for. With the licence, there was no need to ask for the author's authorization: it was already granted.
However, these four freedoms are not sufficient as each person who alters a program or develops it becomes ipso facto co-author. So users should ask for agreement in order to work on the upgraded version and send it to others. In case the new author refuses permission, the users' freedom would be jeopardized again.
5: The copyleft obligation or the obligation to share one's work in the five freedoms mentioned above.
The copyleft knocks down the original intention of copyright. While normally the copyright implies no obligation for the author and allows almost nothing the user, the copyleft proceeds on the contrary: it allows many things to users, it guarantees the four freedoms and obliges future authors to grant to users of their own improved versions the same rights as those of whom they took advantage themselves.
The free character of the work published under GNU GPL licence is then secure for an indefinite future and for any new development.
Creatives Commons licenses
What works with software (via GNU GPL licenses) can also make sense for other kinds of work such as texts, images or music. It is the underlying idea in the Creative Commons Project ( DC), that proposes for these works a whole pallet of licenses, among which every author can choose the best one for their needs.
The author can then decide if the copyleft principle here named "Share Alike" is important or not, and if he wants to allow or prohibit its commercial use. There is also an option to prohibit completely any change in the work. So that all Creative Commons licenses do not necessarily give the five freedoms in their entirety.
If we want to keep in mind the actual openness advocated by the GNU GPL license via the Creatives Commons licenses, we will therefore ensure :
- that our works are under CC BY SA license
- that they are accessible and alterable through free programs (open office or else)