[cc-community] ShareAlike requirement question for a script
Mike Linksvayer
ml at creativecommons.org
Sun Mar 1 16:22:12 EST 2009
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Pablo Rodríguez <oinos at web.de> wrote:
> 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.
First, I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice...
Are you sure? Programs don't usually impose licensing restrictions on
their output. However I guess you're saying that the script is
included in the presentation, so maybe the presentation would be a
"covered work" as described in
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Even then you could look into an exception along the lines of
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WMS or releasing
the script under LGPL, which would (or at least it wouldn't be a
stretch to imagine this, note again that IANAL) have the effect I
gather you intend -- you want to require modifiers of the script
itself to use the same license, but not place requirements on
presentations incorporating the script, where script and presentation
are roughly like library and application code.
> 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?
Good question and interesting analogy -- I don't know.
> 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?
My guess (repeat, non-lawyer) is that the only way BY-SA would be
different from GPL here is that the former would be more ambiguous, as
it doesn't address source code. The question is really weather the
presentation is an adaptation/derivative of the script. If so, both
would require using the same license for everything, if not, they
wouldn't. Note that CC recommends against using CC licenses for
software.
Cue http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2009/02/27/thinking-it-through/ re
"separate magisteria".
Mike
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