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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Compatibility open issue #3: one-way compatibility

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  • From: Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab AT web.de>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Compatibility open issue #3: one-way compatibility
  • Date: Mon, 05 May 2014 01:51:11 +0200

Am Montag, 28. April 2014, 15:20:29 schrieb Kat Walsh:
> One-way compatibility may be desirable in cases where two-way
> compatibility is not possible--often, because the candidate license
> was developed to address a particular purpose or situation that the
> other license was not. For example, software licenses often contain
> terms that general-purpose content licenses like the CC licenses do
> not. These provisions could prove to be insurmountable obstacles to
> two-way compatibility, but they do not necessarily foreclose the
> possibility of one-way compatibility. Is this a possibility CC should
> consider, or should reciprocity be a prerequisite?

As one-way compatibility is the only way to allow for compatibility with
effective sharealike software licenses (let’s just name it: The GPL), and
incompatibility between cc by-sa and GPL already creates lots of legal
uncertainty (see any blender file with a script tieing into the blender API
and imagine me getting a single line of code into blender and then enforcing
my copyright on all by-sa blender files) and practical problems (for example
for my own projects which cannot combine art from battle for wesnoth with art
from ryzoom), I think one-way compatibility should be allowed, if there is a
technical reason for incompatible requirements in another license.

From the practical side: The incompatibility between by-sa and the GPL is the
only thing which is keeping me from licensing works under cc by-sa for which
the shared form is also the form which is in practice being used to make
changes. It is much easier for designers and artists to reuse stuff under
by-sa, because many of them never heard of versiontracking systems or
plain-text source formats, and I create free works to allow them to be reused
and changed. But at the moment, if I licensed my creations under by-sa this
would make it impossible for me to reuse versions in my own projects which
others changed under by-sa, because many of my projects have technical
reasons for needing a source-release which I can only require with the GPL.

The one-way compatibility would therefore allow GPL-projects to release their
art under by-sa and at the same time release more complex creations like
games and books under the GPL. The position of by-sa as sharealike for
standalone art would be strengthened just like the role of the GPL as the
sharealike for works with transparent source. In Essence, the question “by-sa
or GPL” would be reduced to “does the creation practically require a separate
source release? No: by-sa. Yes: GPL”. Most concerns about future derivative
works would disappear (except for those about intentionally hostile acts, but
there are many easier ways to disrupt a project than to relicense adaptions
to art under the GPL: with one-way compatibility, the effect of GPL-licensing
adaptions to by-sa works only scales with less than the amount of
improvements you do - the work others have to invest to recreate what the
person did, because fans may want that - while hostile communication can bind
much more time of other people than the hostile person invests).

Best wishes,
Arne



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