Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Thomas Uwe Gruettmueller <sloyment AT gmx.net>]

Hi Evan, Glenn,                                 (IANAL TINLA)

The problem I see here is that Evan is not the copyright holder, 
but the various contributors. So, in order to change the 
license, he would have to ask all contributors, which is quite 
impossible, because most of them are anonymous.

The Wikipedia is licensed under version 1.2 or any later version 
of the GFDL, whereas Wikitravel is licensed precisely under 
precisely version 1.0 of BY-SA. Thus, a license change would 
require a restart of Wikitravel.

However, large parts seem to be imported from the CIA factbook 
(PD?), and most of the edits seem to be only minor edits 
(additions of single words or short sentences) that can hardly 
be copyrighted. So, instead of restarting the project in case of 
a license change, maybe the few problematic passages can be 
color-tagged for replacement or clarification.

On Sonntag 02 November 2003 17:35, Glenn Otis Brown wrote:
> We're planning on versioning this winter, and making our
> share-alike provision more compatible with similar licenses is
> at the top of the list of changes. So rest assured that we're
> on the case. This email will help a lot as we work through the
> draft.

Would it be possible to make this process transparent? Especially 
for the improvement of CC-SA it would IMHO be beneficial, if 
there were some role playing in a public forum:

 a) playing the role of an offender who would like to exploit
    loop holes

and

 b) playing the role of an artist who shoots himself in the foot
    with too strict licensing terms.

The only way to make the license compatible with other licenses 
would be to maintain and update a list of licenses under which 
the work could be relicensed. This important task would require 
a trustworthy organisation, with clear goals and a democratic 
structure, maybe something like Debian...

I hope the CC project will evolve into this direction.

cu,
Thomas }:o{#
-- - http://217.160.174.154/~sloyment/ - --
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