Mini Profile
MikeNF on 04/15/2009 at 04:10PM
Some Creative Commons news
or, what I read on arstechnica today.
Wikipedia is moving from GFDL to CC-by-sa. GFDL has been the wikipedia standard, but presents some issues for sharing, republishing and a few other things people have been wanting to do with wikipedia. To bypass having every wikipedia contributor ever re-licensing their contributions, the GFDL has been modified slightly, and only briefly, to allow for the switch. Let's hope the wiki-mafia can get it together before we forever lose the ability to share alike and republish in-depth Frankenstein plot summaries or previously unknown facts about Jesse Helms' death.
Another slightly more serious resource, OpenSecrets.org, is also moving to CC-nc-sa. They've been aggregating and releasing financial data on US politics for a while, and beyond the move to CC have released an API and the bulk of their information via CSV.
Lastly, while we finally have a government positively disposed toward net neutrality, Time Warner Cable and a few other telecoms aren't exactly on board. It's sticky legally, but my roadrunner service has been so spotty I don't know if a bandwidth cap would affect me anyway. It would definitely make some of the more media heavy sites (this one.) a lot less functional, which I suspect isn't exactly an issue for the providers.
Have some music I like while I write a real blog post.
