[cc-community] An easy way to notify licensors about new license versions
Gavin Baker
gavin at gavinbaker.com
Wed Dec 5 15:51:35 EST 2007
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I frequently encounter works using outdated versions of CC licenses.
This is sub-optimal, as newer versions have improvements and
clarifications. Although 2.0+ licenses can be up-versioned by the user,
a user who has never encountered CC before will refer first to the
license listed on the work, potentially leading to unnecessary and
avoidable confusion.
I would like to suggest an easy way to actively notify licensors about
new license versions, and suggest improvements to the current method of
passive notification.
My suggestion is: an opt-in mailing list presented to the user in the
license picker.
A visitor who generates a license would be presented with a box that
says e.g., "CC periodically revises its licenses to make improvements
and clarifications. If you would like to receive a notification when
this license is revised, enter your email address. We will not use this
address for any other purpose." (If you like, you could have an optional
checkbox underneath that says, "I would like also to receive general
notifications from CC.")
Since the referral comes from the license chooser, the list could be
license- and jurisdiction-specific. (All jurisdictions are not always at
the same license version.) Knowing the user's license and jurisdiction
also could make the email notification more useful, e.g. "There is a new
version available of BY-SA UK. To make your works available under the
new license, copy and paste the code below..."
My other suggestion: CC already employs a passive mechanism to notify
licensors about newer versions: a note on the license summary. However,
this note could be both more prominent and more informative.
Currently, the note is displayed at the bottom of the license summary.
Instead, it could be displayed at the top of the page, and/or with a
notification in the top corner or floating on the side of the page.
The current note reads as follows: "A new version of this license is
available. You should use it for new works, and you may want to
relicense existing works under it. No works are automatically put under
the new license, however." To improve this:
1. "You" could be replaced with "Licensors" for clarification.
2. A link could be added that says, "For information on using the new
license, click here." This could contain both the code for the new
license (saving a trip back to license chooser) and a "changelog" of
differences in the new version.
3. A sentence should also be added for users to notify them that they
may use the work under the terms of later versions of the license.
Cheers,
- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com
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