Can We Avoid the Great Schism?

At Linux Journal.

Closing the Open Content Schism

Nowadays we are used to content being released under a Creative Commons licence, which has become the kind of de facto free licence for content. So it's rather curious that the biggest free content project of them all - Wikipedia - does not use such licences, but one from the FSF. The explanation is simple: at the time that Wikipedia got going, the only licence that was practical was the GNU Free Documentation Licence.

Hitherto, it's been impossible to reconcile these two, but that looks like it might finally be changing:

It is hereby resolved that:

* The [Wikimedia] Foundation requests that the GNU Free Documentation License be modified in the fashion proposed by the FSF to allow migration by mass collaborative projects to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license;
* Upon the announcement of that relicensing, the Foundation will initiate a process of community discussion and voting before making a final decision on relicensing.

RMS Supports CC

One of the unfortunate schisms in the open world has just been healed. The Creative Commons' decision to drop the Developing Nations licence means that RMS now supports the initiative:

This is a big step forward, and I can now support CC.