[cc-community] ShareAlike requirement question for a script

Pablo Rodríguez oinos at web.de
Sun Mar 1 15:30:40 EST 2009


Hi there,

I have created a Flash version synced with sound of a presentation
released under the CC BY-SA license. I will release the Flash 
presentation under the terms of the CC BY-SA Spain license.

The issue comes with the ActionScript code that is embedded in the Flash 
file. I'm not an expert and my explanation must not be as accurate as it 
should. The ActionScript code is what makes the presentation work in 
Flash mode. This code is not an extremely complicated piece of code, but 
it isn't a trivial one (about 400 lines of code). They are actually two 
scripts: one for presentations themselves and another a small loader 
that retrieve those presentations (about 70 lines). But for the sake of 
simplicity, let's consider the issue as it were only one script.

The ActionScript code comes with SuperShow (an application release under 
the GNU GPLv3, http://rastersoft.com/programas/supershow.html). I have 
contributed to that code and I have improved it. Both SuperShow's main 
developer and I are very interested in releasing this script with the 
ShareAlike requirement, so that others might improve the script, keeping 
those changes available to others.

But the issue is that the GNU GPL would require that the presentations 
on which this script were licensed under the same licensing terms. And 
we don't think this would be a good idea for presentations. As I said 
before, we would like to have the script under a ShareAlike requirement, 
but not imposing restrictions on which terms the final presentation 
should be released.

I wonder whether using a BY-SA license for the script would fit our 
needs. The script is related to the final presentation neither as an 
adaptation nor as a collection. The adapted script is a derivative from 
the script itself (and here the need for the ShareAlike requirement), 
but when embedded in the final Flash file, the final work is neither an 
adaptation nor a collection.

I think its functionality would be similar to a table of contents in a 
book (it isn't a perfect example, but I think it might illustrate the 
point here). Would the release of a table of contents under a BY-SA 
license require the release of the whole book contents under the same 
license?

And the final question is: would the release of the ActionScript code 
under a BY-SA license require that all Flash files in which it were 
embedded to be released under the same license?

Thanks for your help,


Pablo


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