(Post last updated January 1, 2015)
I have decided to (re-)license the content of this website under a Creative Commons licence; CC BY-SA 4.0 International, to be exact. This means that you can take what I wrote here, reuse it for whatever you see fit, or combine it with other content under the same licence, e.g. from Wikipedia. The only requirements are that
- you quote where you got it from, i.e. from me (Dirk Haun) and this website (www.themobilepresenter.com)
- you share the result under the same licence
As someone who strongly believes in the idea of Open Source software, the contradiction of having traditionally copyrighted content on this site has bothered me for a while now. I just wasn't sure what the best licence would be. Initially, I thought that one of the NonCommercial (NC) variants of Creative Commons would be a good fit. However, on reading up on the discussion regarding these licence variants, I came to the conclusion that the BY-SA variant provides almost the same sort of protection of my rights without invoking the controvery of the non-free NC variants.
I mean, let's face it: All this content is available on the web, so if some "bad guys" want to "steal" it, I can't do anything about it anyway, copyright or no copyright. At least with CC BY-SA, I'm not preventing people with new creative ideas from doing what they want to do just because it somehow conflicts with the vaguely defined concept of "commercial" use.
A word of warning (or two, actually):
- Some of the articles on this site use photos and images that are under different licences (even commercial ones, e.g. stock photos). So please double-check the licences for those.
- I reserve the right to publish content under different licences, including non-free ones. This is only for theoretical rare circumstances where CC BY-SA does not work for one reason or another, e.g. for cooperation with other sites or institutions. There is no such content on the site at the time of this writing (last updated January 1, 2015) and I plan to keep it at an absolute minimum. Such content will also be clearly marked.
So there you have it. Share and reuse away. I'm interested in seeing what you do with it; please let me know in the comments :)
Update January 1, 2015: I've updated the licence from CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported to CC BY-SA 4.0 International. All that means is that I'm using a newer version of the same licence as before. The new version clarifies a few border cases and acknowledges established best practices (you'll find the details on the Creative Commons website). They shouldn't make a difference in practice (and if they do, please do not hesitate to contact me - I'm sure we'll find a solution). Thanks for reading this and keep on sharing.
("Public Art - Thessaloniki" stock photo by Lucretious, from freeimages.com)
Please email me for details.
