Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>]

Hi Chris and Dave,

I'll have to look into this a little more -- it's a great question --  
but I am not sure why Creative Commons licenses would be incompatible  
with the GPL.
For starters, our licenses are meant to apply only to nonsoftware  
works.  (Nothing's stopping you from using them with software, but they  
say nothing about code, so you
are probably better off going with an existing software licenses.)   
This is one of the main reasons why our "Share Alike" provision is not  
called copyleft.  We were inspired by copyleft,
but the term begins to lose its original meaning outside the software  
context.  The nonsoftware analogue to making the code of a new work  
openly available is to make the derivative work
itself available on the same terms as the original.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't see the incompatability because  
I don't see the two licenses even needing to interact, as they cover  
different types of works.  But, like I said, let me read a little more  
and get back to you on this one.

Thanks,

Glenn

On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 10:41  AM, Chris Croome wrote:

> Hi
>
> Thanks for the reply, I feared that the CC share alike license might
> not be GPL-compatible :-(
>
> Perhaps Creative Commons might what to consider what changes would
> be required to be made to make the share alike license
> GPL-compatible since it's aim does seem to be the creation of
> copyleft material?
>
> Dual licensing material with a GPL-compatible license like the
> Design Science or Free Art ones [2] might be good interim measure --
> it's something I'm considering.
>
> Chris
>
> [2] http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses
>
> On Tue 14-Jan-2003 at 11:49:44AM -0500, Dave Turner via RT wrote:
> > The Share Alike license isn't GPL-compatible, because it requires
> > derivative works to be distributed under its exact terms, and its
> > exact terms aren't the GPL.  For instance, they include:
> >
> > > > You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
> > publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological
> > measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner
> > inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. <<
> >
> > I'm not actually sure that that provision is consistent with it
> > being a Free Software license.
> >
> > On Sun, 2003-01-12 at 17:56, Chris Croome via RT wrote:
> > > I'd be interested to know (and I'm sure others would too) if the
> > > Creative Commons Share Alike License [1] is considered to be GPL
> > > compatible in the way that the Design Science and Free Art
> > > licenses are?
> > >
> > > If there is a FSF position it would be great if you added the
> > > information to this page:
> > >
> > >   http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
> > >
> > > [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0
>
> --  
> http://chris.croome.net/#blog
> _______________________________________________
> cc-licenses mailing list
> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses

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Glenn Otis Brown                                       
glenn AT creativecommons.org
Executive Director                                                       
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(cc) creativecommons 		                                  f  
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