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

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab AT web.de>
  • To: Anthony <ok AT theendput.com>
  • Cc: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Compatibility open issue #3: one-way compatibility
  • Date: Sat, 10 May 2014 16:37:42 +0200

Am Freitag, 9. Mai 2014, 18:51:19 schrieb Anthony:
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Arne Babenhauserheide
> <arne_bab AT web.de>wrote:
>
> > Am Mittwoch, 7. Mai 2014, 18:37:06 schrieb Anthony:
> > > I know I'm responding to a long post with a short one-sentence response,
> > > but I just don't get this part.
> >
> > That’s completely OK ☺
> >
> > > Why can't you just dual license?
> >
> > Because that allows others to add changes under the *easier* license and
> > make it impossible for me to integrate these changes.
> >
>
> But...doesn't one-way compatibility do the same thing?

No: It makes allows others to add changes under a license which is *harder*
to comply with.

> > My personal rule for licensing is: I want others to be able to use my
> > works as long as I can combine all future versions of my creations with
> > all
> > my other creations.
> >
>
> So you want two-way compatibility. Otherwise someone can use your work,
> release the derivative under GPL, and you can't merge the changes in with
> the CC-BY-SA version of the work.

I would prefer having a consistent sharealike for all types of work. But as
you can see from visual arts and computer programs, different types of work
have very different requirements for effective and usable copyleft, and the
CC licenses are unsuitable for code. To quote myself:

> > Changing the license of art to GPL makes reuse less convenient, but
> > sharealike is preserved.
> >
> > Changing the license of a program to BY-SA effectively kills sharealike.

That is why one-way compatibility from BY-SA to GPL does not hurt art, but
two-way compatibility would hurt programs.

If I were to primarily release art, I could switch to GPL and lose some
convenience, but not the basic function of the license. If I switch a program
to BY-SA, the license does not do its job anymore. Due to losing convenience
in the swicth from BY-SA to GPL, I do not worry about having most art switch
to GPL in future. As a similar situation: AGPL provides much stronger
copyleft for programs which are used over the network than GPL, but it
requires always shipping the currently running sources which is quite
inconvenient. Consequently only few people outside the creators of libre
webservices like GNU social use the AGPL.


Seen from a threat-perspective:

One way compatibility of BY-SA to GPL allows someone to make it less
convenient for you to use his or her improvements, but it does not allow
someone to make it impossible for you.

Two way compatibility of BY-SA and GPL would allow people to make it
impossible to use improvements to programs by just not releasing the source.

No compatibility has created a situation in which blender artists are in
constant peril of lawsuites, in which the art from Ryzoom and Wesnoth cannot
be combined and in which copyleft hardware designs are split among two
incompatible licenses, which hurts free culture much more than the
possiibility that someone could make it more inconvenient to reuse changes to
works by paying the price of inconvenience him- or herself.


Best wishes,
Arne
--
A man in the streets faces a knife.
Two policemen are there it once. They raise a sign:

“Illegal Scene! Noone may watch this!”

The man gets robbed and stabbed and bleeds to death.
The police had to hold the sign.

…Welcome to Europe, citizen. Censorship is beautiful.

( http://draketo.de/stichwort/censorship )







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