bomber wrote:And I can see no reason why anyone with a sane mind would not say that is the best licence for flightgear going forward.....
A bit more research into this topic.
The FSF foundation lists a rather comprehensive set of licenses available, and reports compatibility issues with many of them. Only if the bar is green means: it is compatible, but still it is important to read the notes (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html)
GreenBar | CC0 (#CC0)
CC0 is a public domain dedication from Creative Commons. A work released under CC0 is dedicated to the public domain to the fullest extent permitted by law. If that is not possible for any reason, CC0 also provides a lax, permissive license as a fallback. Both public domain works and the lax license provided by CC0 are compatible with the GNU GPL.
(No work in FG is released as CC0 )
RedBar (totally incompatible) Creative Commons Nocommercial, any version (#CC-BY-NC)
This license does not qualify as free, because there are restrictions on charging money for copies. Thus, we recommend you do not use this license for documentation.
In addition, it has a drawback for any sort of work: when a modified version has many authors, in practice getting permission for commercial use from all of them would become infeasible.
RedBar | Creative Commons Noderivatives, any version (#CC-BY-ND)
This license does not qualify as free,because there are restrictions on distributing modified versions. We recommend you do not use this license for documentation.
GreenBar | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (a.k.a. CC BY) (#ccby)
This is a non-copyleft free license that is good for art and entertainment works, and educational works. It is compatible with all versions of the GNU GPL; however, like all CC licenses, it should not be used on software.
(#which-cc) Creative Commons publishes many licenses which are very different. Therefore, to say that a work “uses a Creative Commons license” is to leave the principal questions about the work's licensing unanswered. When you see such a statement in a work, please ask the author to change the work to state clearly and visibly which of the Creative Commons license it uses. And if someone proposes to “use a Creative Commons license” for a certain work, it is vital to ask “Which Creative Commons license?” before proceeding any further.
however, like all CC licenses, it should not be used on software.
About this, Creative Commons has this to say. (Notice CC, themselves DO DISSUADE you from using any of this family of license in Software. Notice also all FG content IS software.
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software wrote:Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software?
We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.
Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.
Version 4.0 of CC's Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here.
Also, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry.
While we recommend against using a CC license on software itself, CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as for separate artistic elements such as game art or music.
All other CC variants are listed as non-compatible and no-free.
Most importantly, Bomber, notice that CC does attempt to dissuade you on licensing any source code and or documentation under ANY cc at all. Specifically FDMs are purely source code.
Also, I think it is clear (at least to me) how CC (any variant) is not the way forward for FG. (nor a way backward... simply, not a way at all!)
