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Creative Commons fans, which licence should I use for the tips published by this account?

@feditips@mstdn.social That depends on what you (do not) want people to do with your tips.

The website
https://tldrlegal.com/ can help you out. That one explains pretty clearly what each license entails.

tldrlegal.com TLDRLegal - Software Licenses Explained in Plain English

@feditips@mstdn.social I am kinda curious though, what exactly do you want to license?

Helpful information can't really be licensed, that's free information for everyone anyway.

@bram

Trying to encourage more Fediverse-related tips sites and hopefully having an explicitly libre licence would help?

Some of the tips on the website are long bits of text (longer than a toot), so a licence would be helpful.

@feditips CC-BY if you want credit. Add -NC if you want to make sure nobody tries to profit from them. That's the basic ones.

@haverholm

Hmm... 🤔 This could be tricky as some of the tips are stuff people suggested. I can't take credit for that, and as @bram the basic information is public domain anyway.

Should I just leave it as it is, and informally encourage people to make their own?

@feditips@mstdn.social @haverholm@imaginair.es That would be my advice, yes.

Licenses are informal permissions written in a formal manner. You saying "sure, do whatever" is just as meaningful as a formal license.

The reason most large companies prefer licenses, is because they're more specific on what you can and cannot do. But if your mentality is "do whatever", then it doesn't matter anyway. Individuals will do whatever and large companies will have the lawyers present to tell them they don't NEED your permission.
🤷

@bram @haverholm

Just thinking that some people who are into libre projects might feel happier about re-publishing something which has an explicit libre licence of some kind?

@feditips@mstdn.social @haverholm@imaginair.es

You can always add a license to make people feel better.
👍

I think CC0 1.0 is the most free CC license:
https://tldrlegal.com/license/creative-commons-cc0-1.0-universal

No demands, everything allowed, as long as they don't hold you liable or try to patent it themselves.

tldrlegal.com Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC-0) Explained in Plain English - TLDRLegal

@feditips @bram Yeah, seems the question is how much you estimate that you add to the advice you give (contextualising, specifying, presentation...).

Since the information itself is essentially public already, that's the part that you can claim — or abandon — "rights" to with a license.

@haverholm@imaginair.es @feditips@mstdn.social

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, if you write an article out of, then you could claim intellectual property on the exact wording - but the content of your article would still be legal to share.

@bram @feditips Yeah, my frame of reference is when book publishers cash in on publishing authors from the PD. They're just trademarking their own edition (basically the book layout), and avoid having to pay royalties.

@haverholm @bram

So, this might be a good reason to have a Sharealike clause? To prevent anyone claiming they have copyright?

@feditips@mstdn.social @haverholm@imaginair.es

That's up to you.

I don't think it's likely that someone will take your tips, then share them but also forbid anyone else from sharing them AND make sure no-one knows you're sharing them too.
🤷 The credit clause is mostly used by people who want recognition for the work.

@bram @haverholm

That's the attribution clause though?

I mean sharealike as in they have to use CC licence too?

@feditips@mstdn.social @haverholm@imaginair.es

Oh, I misunderstood.

You can use that, but consider it no guarantee since it's already questionable whether the tips are licensable at all.

@bram @haverholm

Thinking of something like this:

"Basic instructions are public domain, any copyright which may exist for my texts is licensed under CC-By-SA"

...or something along those lines?

Just something so that anyone wanting to use it in a libre project knows they have permission even without rephrasing.

@feditips @haverholm @bram I personally feel like ShareAlike is almost always a good choice, because it means people can't copy-paste your work without making it also freely available, which is in my opinion one of the most important parts of copyleft.
If someone really wants to have a different copyright situation they can always just rewrite the tips anyway, since knowledge of how to use the platform is definitionally not copyrightable.

@feditips @haverholm @bram as for other people's contributions:, knowledge is uncopyrightable ("Copyright protection extends to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such", 1996 WIPO copyright treaty), meaning you can always rewrite someone's tip and publish it, and the need for credit will only be moral, not legal.
You can also just ask people for permission when you want keep the exact phrasing.

@feditips@mstdn.social @Yuvalne@433.world @haverholm@imaginair.es

I'm actually starting a Fediverse instance that highlights information and changes on such rules & rights at for.digital-justice.com

It's not finished yet, but I'd love to have that put on the FediFollows list in the future.

@feditips if my template is correct, Bradley and Karen of Software Freedom Conservancy and the Free as in Freedom oggcast recommend CC BY-SA 4.0 international unported

They discussed it in the oggcast and I picked it up from there

@feditips I tend to switch between CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-SA-NC. As of late I tend to like the latter more, because I want people to go through me first if you want to make money off of my work (since CC still leaves the copyright at your behalf, meaning you may still license it separately to different people however you want).

@feditips also, for the specifics, I recommend using v4.0 unported. Doesn't matter all that much, but it's better than previous versions, even if it hadn't yet been ported to your country of residence (mine for example only has up to v2.5 afaik)