Creative Commons licence "upgrade" on Bulbapedia

[Zhen Lin]

The newest version of the Creative Commons licence is 3.0.
Bulbapedia uses 2.0.
Bulbanews uses 2.5.
PokéWiki uses 2.0 for Germany. (There is no newer version.)
ポケモンWiki uses 2.5. (Not the Japanese jurisdiction version.)
Wikinezka uses 2.5 for Poland.

Perhaps we should all "upgrade" to 3.0, or at least, 2.5, for consistency if not to satisfy some technical legal requirements:

You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons iCommons license that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Japan). You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License or other license specified in the previous sentence with every copy or phonorecord of each Derivative Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform. You may not offer or impose any terms on the Derivative Works that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder, and You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Derivative Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. The above applies to the Derivative Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Derivative Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License.

Notice that it does not mention "earlier version". So while 2.0 content can be licenced under 2.5, the reverse is not necessarily true.

Of course, since 2.5 is forward compatible with 2.0, in theory we should be able to carry out this licence change without needing to solicit the consent of everyone who has ever contributed to Bulbapedia. We can also put up a notice to the effect of "content published before X Y, 2007 was originally published under version 2.0 of the licence; content published after that date is licensed under version 2.5."

If there are no objections, we will officially switch over to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 on Sunday, April 15, 2007.

 

[Zhen Lin]

As no objections have been raised, the switch is effective immediately.