[cc-community] “I thought cc-by-sa is GPL compatible” and license incompatibility woes

Arne Babenhauserheide arne_bab at web.de
Wed Apr 11 01:59:51 EDT 2012


Dear cc-community,

2 months ago we discussed about GPL compatibility, and 2 main points
were raised against it:

* Artists who want GPL compatibility can just dual license, and
* If you want to use old content under GPL, just ask the artist if you
  may relicense

I then decided to try to put these principles to action: I created a
screencast in which I used GPL-licensed graphics and by-sa music. I
was finished with the screencast after 5h, plus 3h encoding time.

Then I started writing to the artists whose music I used to try to get
the right to use them under GPL.

The first two were happy to allow me to use their songs under
GPL. Finding ways to reach them took some time, but within one or two
days I had positive replies - with one of them even stating

	 “tho I thought cc-by-sa 3.0 is GPL compatible”

I used Google+, email and Jamendo for contacting them.

The third band did not yet answer, though I tried to contact them over
email, myspace and Jamendo (not facebook: I am not on that network for
philosophical reasons). It’s over a week now, and I was not able to
clear the rights of a screencast which took me just 5h to make from
first keystroke of the draft to finished cutting (I don’t count
encoding time: that happens while I am away). So license
incompatibility is a real hindrance to free culture. And:

* Some artists already expect cc-by-sa to be compatible, so “broken
  expectations” are no argument against GPL-compatibility (though I
  know that 3 groups is a pretty small test-group)

* Just asking is no option, because then the rights clearance takes
  much longer than the creative process and sometimes is not possible
  at all. I’ll likely have to find new music - except if one of you
  knows someone from the woodenlegsband. I can only hope that I’ll
  find other music which works with the screencast.

* This was a calculated risk. I knew that those problems might appear,
  but I decided to give the benefit of doubt to those who say that
  GPL-incompatibility is no problem. Now I know by *experience* that
  they are wrong.

In short: We need GPL compatibility. This is one more usecase. Others
are in the wiki:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/GPL_compatibility_use_cases#More_raw_material

Best wishes,
Arne
--
singing a part of the history of free software: 
- http://infinite-hands.draketo.de -


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