Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Trust and merge [was: Mapping of license restrictions (CC - GFDL compatibility)]

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Trust and merge [was: Mapping of license restrictions (CC - GFDL compatibility)]
  • Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:24:50 +0000

On 26 Nov 2005, at 02:37, j lipszyc wrote:

I don't understand that. I agree that changes we make in 3.0 would make
also previously relased works GFDL compatible, but why you think this is
not legally possible?

BY-SA clause 4b states:

"You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work [...] under the terms of [...] a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, [...]"

So any 2.0 or 2.5 or work may be included in a 3.0-licensed derivative. But the 2.0 and 2.5 licenses do not include the author's permission to re-license the work either as FDL or under a license that allows FDL re-licensing.

Therefore BY-SA 3.0 cannot include FDL cross-licensing.

To borrow Greg's characters:

Alice licenses her essay on Localtown BY-SA 2.0.

Bob uses this essay to produce a travel guide to Localtown which he relicenses BY-SA 3.0 under 2.0's derivatives upgrade clause.

Carol corrects this guide, adds more information about Localtown, and uses the derivatives cross-licensing clause of 3.0 to relicense the work as FDL.

Some of Alice's work is now FDL. If Bob and Carol only add information to Alice's work rather than modifying it, then the whole of Alice's work is now FDL. But Alice has not given permission for her work to be FDL.

Let other licenses be made compatible with BY-SA.

You know this not likely to be done.

Some things are worth working towards even if they are not popular. The EFF deprecated their music license in favor of the CC licenses, so it's not impossible.

Not even in predictable future.

Some things are worth working towards even if they take time. The FSF managed to get the BSD license revised.

Why? Because some CC actions make certain people uncertain about CC
long-terms goals and behaviour.

Suddenly introducing a clause that allows work to be re-licensed will not improve doubters' confidence in CC.

BY-SA license automatically updates
itself to latest version. FSF have to trust CC to allow this for GFDL
works. Without FSF trust - no two-way compatibility.
As you probably know i strongly believe, that CC needs something similar
to Debian Guidelines, some kind of social contract we can treat as our
constitution while crafting future licenses versions.

I agree.

This may be a good starting point to gain FSF trust.
But it's not going to work one side only. There is nothing wrong for
BY-SA users to make their work GFDL compatible right now.

They can dual license as they have always been able to. If "but you cannot guarantee how derivatives will be licensed" is an argument against this then it is also an argument against allowing derivatives to be incompatibly re-licensed as part of the license itself.

Allowing BY-SA work to be taken and placed into a fragmented commons will not help reduce commons fragmentation.

But future is
different: we also have to trust FSF and believe, that any changes they
make to GFDL in future will not hurt current BY-SA users. FSF do change
their licenses. Such change as adding something similar to "invariant
section" (that as you know that happened) may make CC users very unhappy.
So we need trust and sadly this is something we do not have.

If we had trust we wouldn't need licenses. :-)

FSF removed
all CC licenses from their lists. Lawrence still didn't answered
questions about it (i understand he promised to do it in his series of
emails, but this didn't happened yet).
There is something more: Richard Stallman doesn't think, that license
compatibility is a freedom, too.

Freedom of contract is a vitally important freedom. Incompatibility for the sake of it is a restriction on freedom. Since the FDL and BY- SA were written to address very different needs, they fall under the former not the latter.

Software is different than texts of culture,

In what ways?

and he simply do not have to deal with our problems.

Which problems?

If there is program under non-free license he writes another one.

If there is an artwork under a non-free license I can make another one.

If there is
something under free, but GPL non-compatible license, he puts it into
other directory.

CC and FDL work can be aggregated in this way I think.

This can't be done in culture. You cannot air a movie
with somen shots kept in other directory.

You can however run a cinema that shows both CC and non-CC movies,

So he don't believe that license comatibility is actually something we
should fight for, and how we are going to convince him without mutual trust?

The current proposal is not "compatibility", it is capitulation. A one-way give-away of work.

How this can be solved if we will work hard to gain mutual trust? I
think there are two possible solutions. First is to have a written
agreement about freedoms guaranteed by GFDL and CC BY-SA licenses. This
could be a base for two-way comaptibility.
Even better will be license MERGE. If CC and FSF together will worded a
license which will suit needs of current GFDL and BY-SA users and made
it next version of both - that will be something really, really good.

Because of the way the upgrade clauses in each license are worded, this cannot happen.

We are talking about merging a license written for computer manuals with a general remix culture license. Think about all the ways BY-SA makes it easy(er) to use work, then think about taking an FDL poem with invariant sections and translating it into a song in another language as part of a film.

AFAIK without "invariant section" GFDL world is free (even if not
perfect) so there is nothing wrong with it.

Invariant sections cannot be banned from FDL works derived from BY-SA work.

I do not really care what
license name is as long as it preserves freedoms i want my users to
have.

Then depending on the social contract you expect for your users you may not want derivatives of their work being placed under the FDL rather than BY-SA.

There is nothing wrong for CC to actively promote some other
licenses than CC ones. Do we care about brand or freedom? If it's brand
- hell, better no for all of us.

CC already provide deeds and logos for the GPL and the LGPL.

The FSF and Wikipedia have very strong brands. But practical effects are far more important than brands. The practical effects of the FDL are different to the practical effects of BY-SA. And allowing work to be taken from By-SA and made FDL will not have the practical effect of defragmenting the commons, it will have the opposite effect.

- Rob.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page