License doesn't allow translating tutorials to other languages

[BlaXpirit]

https://github.com/SFML/SFML-Website/blob/master/LICENSE

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

This means that translating the SFML tutorials to other languages (programming or just languages) and publishing it is not allowed. I think the particular clause that I quoted should be dropped from the license. Attribution is required anyway, that's good, and I don't see how can there be problems from someone reusing parts of the SFML website.

[Tank]

I would even be fine with CC-BY.

[Mario]

Besides the translation problem, I'd even consider it a bit weird to license tutorials (and tutorial code) as ND. Obviously it won't cover trivial things, but even longer snippets are specifically there to show how to do something, so not allowing derivative works is quite counter-intuitive to the initial idea.

But yeah, I think CC-BY would solve that problem.

[Nexus]

There must have been a reason why we chose this license with no derivatives, does anyone know it?

[FRex]

It's for entire website, not just tutorials, I guess it made sense to someone sometime or was picked randomly, the commit doesn't say.
I don't see a problem here really, it's not bad that tutorials are centralized and immutable IMO, if someone makes a translation, it can be sent to you for proof reading and hosting on site, no reason to allow people to grab stuff off the website and run with it.
Although a promise like the Qt/KDE one that all of the website code and documentation becomes much more permissive if you abandon or attempt to close it would be nice and reassuring that even if all of the team is gone SFML can continue and use old resources.

[binary1248]

I think people are missing the most important part of the clause:

NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

This doesn't mean you can't modify the material, it just means if you do, you may not distribute it yourself. You are still free to submit patches/changes to the owner of the original work, but they must agree and merge those changes in order for you to legally distribute it yourself. In essence, it means that any copies of the website in circulation on the internet are verbatim from our repository. This protects us from any nasty surprises, vandalism, defacement, spoofing, etc.

[Jesper Juhl]

Not to mention; flawed translations saying something the original never did.

[alanwillms]

Let's say someone add SFML bindings to Ruby.

He won't be able to adapt SFML tutorials examples to Ruby and share them on its website because SFML website license doesn't allow it.

That's the issue here.

[Jesper Juhl]

He could still adapt the documents and submit them back to the SFML team for inclusion on the site, then link to them...

[BlaXpirit]

He could still adapt the documents and submit them back to the SFML team for inclusion on the site, then link to them...

Since when does the site host 3rd party projects?

Not to mention; flawed translations saying something the original never did.

Maybe SFML should've been closed-source to prevent flawed forks...

Let's be reasonable here.

This protects us from any nasty surprises, vandalism, defacement, spoofing, etc.

Uh, no, it doesn't, unless you can find the people and win a lawsuit, which would still take months.


Also: thousands of people copying code from tutorials breaking the license.

[FRex]

Since when does the site host 3rd party projects?

It hosts links to bindings while saying they are not official and user made.

Maybe SFML should've been closed-source to prevent flawed forks...

The license prevents flawed forks being misrepresented as SFML.

Uh, no, it doesn't, unless you can find the people and win a lawsuit, which would still take months.

That's stretching it into absurdity...

Also: thousands of people copying code from tutorials breaking the license.

That's stretching it in the other absurdity...


The only missing thing IMO is a promise that if the copyright holders abandon the docs then they are automatically forfeit into CC0.

[Hapax]

Also: thousands of people copying code from tutorials breaking the license.

People "copy" code from the tutorials to learn from them (and sometimes to check if SFML is working). That's what tutorials are. They teach you how to do something. When you actually write your own code, you write it from scratch, using the knowledge you learned; you don't start with the tutorial code and modify it until it does what you want (as mentioned earlier, that is what you do when you're learning).
Sometimes tutorials are quoted and therefore the tutorials are copied directly. This is acceptable within the licence as it's not being modified.

[Laurent]

Who exactly decided to use this license for the website, and when was it decided? I don't remember voting for that...

Let's be permissive. I find it rather stupid to have such limitations, which will only block people who try to write useful stuff anyway. People who write bullshit won't stop at our license... Users should know that sfml-dev.org is the only place where you can find official and reliable material about SFML. If it's not the case, then we clearly made something wrong about the website.

[Tank]

Laurent: Full ACK.