Gov/en/Portal:Legal/Free-Licensing: Difference between revisions

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~~'''Free / Libre Licensing''' —~~ WikiDeal ~~governance~~.

{{KidsIntro|In simple words: this page explains how WikiDeal lets everyone freely share, copy, and reuse its content, like a giant open library.}}

~~''Here is a first content idea for this page.'' Systematic libre licensing rules.~~

''~~Reference language~~: ~~English. Starter~~ page ~~— content to be expanded~~.''

🔒 '''Admin view:''' You are viewing an administrative or core structural page.

~~See also~~: ~~[[Gov/en/Portal~~:~~Legal~~/~~Main|Legal~~ & ~~Compliance]]~~

== Free Licensing ==

License Summary

{| class="wikitable"

|-

| Software

| AGPL v3

|-

| Content

| CC BY-SA 4.0

|-

| Contracts

| CC BY-SA 4.0

|-

| Copyleft

| Strong (AGPL)

|-

| Commercial use

| Permitted

|-

| Patent clause

| Included

|}

WikiDeal's entire software stack is published under the '''GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPL v3)''', and all textual content — including this wiki, contract templates, research reports, and governance documents — is published under '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA)'''. These are not mere gestures toward openness; they are structural guarantees that the platform cannot be privatised through code or content appropriation.

=== Why AGPL v3? ===

The AGPL v3 was chosen specifically because it closes the "SaaS loophole" in the standard GPL. Under GPL, a company could take WikiDeal's code, deploy it as a service, make proprietary modifications, and never share those modifications — because they never "distribute" the software. The AGPL requires that anyone who runs a modified version as a network service must publish their modifications under the same license. This means WikiDeal's code ecosystem grows with every deployment, and no single operator can create a private fork that extracts value without contributing back.

The choice of AGPL reflects WikiDeal's understanding of how software value is created in the 21st century: not through distribution of binaries, but through operation of services. The AGPL ensures that the commons grows with every use of the commons.

=== CC BY-SA for Content and Contracts ===

All WikiDeal contract templates, wiki articles, financial model documentation, and research outputs are published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This means anyone can use, adapt, and build upon this material, provided they attribute the source and publish their adaptations under the same terms. A babysitting cooperative in Tokyo can take WikiDeal's contract templates and adapt them to Japanese law — and their adaptations are automatically available to the global WikiDeal community.

The ShareAlike requirement is the key ingredient: it creates a cumulative commons where every improvement is shared. Over time, WikiDeal's legal and documentation Infrastructure becomes a global resource for cooperative commerce — a kind of legal equivalent of the free software commons that has powered the internet's Infrastructure for three decades.

Attribution requirements are deliberately light: citing "WikiDeal / Ynternet.org Foundation" suffices. WikiDeal does not require commercial operators to "promote" it — only to acknowledge the source and continue the sharing tradition. This is consistent with the wiki culture that inspired the project: Wikipedia does not demand promotional credit, only attribution and sharing.

'''See also:'''