Open Source

28889 readers

199 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

what's a good open source license for a book? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If I decide to self-publish a book what happens to the copyright? Is there a way to prevent others from claiming copyrights for a book published autonomously? Are there OS licenses specifically tuned for books?

top 28 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

You probably want the SA (share-alike) or NC-SA (non-commercial share-alike) but take a look and decide what suits you best.

From https://creativecommons.org/faq/#do-i-have-to-provide-my-name-can-i-ask-that-my-name-be-removed :

Do I have to provide my name? Can I ask that my name be removed?

As a licensor, you may choose to receive under any name that you wish, such as a pseudonym or pen name, or you may choose not to be credited by name at all, and to publish anonymously. You do not have to be credited under your legal name. Most jurisdictions permit this, but you should check to be sure this is valid in your jurisdiction.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

CC BY-SA

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

or CC BY-NC-SA (the non-commercial-use-only one)

[+] [email protected] -7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No, not NC. People should be able to feed themselves for their work

[–] mholiv 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

With a NC license, the author still can sell the work and make money. It’s just that other people can’t.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes. And other people should be able to use other people's work to make derivative works to feed themselves

[–] mholiv 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think that’s best left up to the author. Sometimes someone might prefer that their art stay independent of capitalism. I think that is a respectable position.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're not a capitalist because you need to buy food

[–] mholiv 2 points 2 days ago

But selling other peoples’ labor would introduce it to the capitalist system. Not saying that makes you a capitalist. Just saying some people might want to keep their art out of that system.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That is entirely up to the author who is creating the original work. They set the license and people can choose whether or not they want to work with the license. If i wanted to use someone else's work for commercial purposes then i would just ignore any works released under a NC license. I'm not entitled to someone else's work just because i need to eat

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 days ago

Assholes choose not to copyleft. Assholes choose NC licensees too

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

RMS’s biography “Free as in Freedom” seems to be under the GNU Free Documentation License, incase that’s anything to go by.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Personally I would keep it proprietary unit I've made all the money I can they change it to an open license like Creative Commons Share-A-like

[–] Linus_Torvalds 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I hope that you will never publish a book.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago

🤡