[cc-licenses] ShareAlike and version compatibility

Evan Prodromou evan at prodromou.name
Wed Apr 12 20:30:47 EDT 2006


This is something of a wishful thinking question.

Within the text of the CCPL, there are several references to "this
License":

      * You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
        publicly digitally perform the Work only under the terms of this
        License, ...
      * You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier
        for, this License with every copy or phonorecord of the Work You
        distribute [...]
      * You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
        publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the
        terms of this License, a later version of this License with the
        same License Elements as this License, [...]

I wonder: would it be at all reasonable to consider "this License" to
be, say, the Attribution-ShareAlike license in any of its versions? That
is, when the license text says "this license", it'd mean an object that
has gone through several revisions over the last few years?

I ask because this interpretation would make the different versions of
ShareAlike licenses with the same license elements mutually compatible.
You could distribute a by-sa 1.0 work under the terms of the 2.5
license, or vice versa. That'd be a help for projects where license
upgrades are uncomfortable (for example, wikis).

Anyways, I was optimistic about the idea until I read the last bullet
point above; referring to "a later version of this License" seems to
make it clear that "this License" means "this particular version".

~Evan

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>
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