Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Luke Stodola <lbs6380 AT cs.rit.edu>]

If I release something under the CC-BY-SA license, I would not want
someone else to take it, modify it slightly, and release the result with
the added restriction of NonCommercial or NoDeriv.  This is akin to
releasing my code under the GPL so that some company can't take it and
sell it under a more restrictive license.  If I didn't care about
derivative works, I'd use the CC-BY license, just like I might use the
BSD license for software.

Using the CC-BY-SA is my decision.  I believe that this is a good
license to standardize on, and by putting my work under it, I am showing
my support for it.  I feel that it is important that artists can
commercially distribute their work -- even if it is based on someone
else's work.  Artists do, after all, have to support themselves
somehow.  By adding the Non-commercial use only clause to a piece of
work, you're preventing its use by a large segment of the population.

I also dislike the No derivative works clause.  I feel everybody,
directly or indirectly, builds on other works, and rather than trying to
prevent it, we should encourage it.

On these two points I have a personal stance on.  I care about them. 
Therefore, I would like my viewpoints to be passed along with the work. 
I don't think that the CC-BY-SA should allow derivative works under
CC-BY-NC-SA.

Another issue in licenses is access to the transparent copy, loosely
equivalent to the source code for the free software program.  While
there are certainly important reasons for requiring this, I personally
feel that it is not essential.  (For one, there is not yet standardized
formats for everything that would make this easy.  Once Audacity,
Rezound, Ardour, and any non-free audio software all standardize on some
interchange format that actually makes the "transparent copy" useful,
this may become more important.)  However, I agree that some people may
want to _require_ that the source is available.  The GFDL does this. 
For a project like Wikipedia or a software manual, this provision
actually makes a lot of sense.  I would want my works to be accessible
to e.g. Wikipedia.  So my feeling is that others may add this
restriction to a derivative work, or they may not.

So for each requirement in a license (Attribution, Derivative works
allowed, Commercial use allowed, Source version available) someone can
have one of three opinions: Required, Don't Care, Prohibited.

For example: I would like to require attribution, require derivative
works to be allowed, and require commercial use to be allowed, but I
don't care about having the source version available; I don't require
it, but someone else who builds on my work could.

The CC-BY-SA 1.0 seems to require attribution, require derivative works
to be allowed, require commercial use to be allowed, and prohibit
requiring the source to be available.  Hence the incompatibility with
the GFDL, which adds this restriction.

The CC-BY-SA 2.0 Draft seems to require attribution, _allow_ derivative
works to be allowed, allow _others_ to _prohibit_ commercial use, and
prohibit requiring the source to be available.  This is still
incompatibility with the GFDL, but it now allows a third party to
prevent another person from using a work based in whole or in part on my
work, even though I explicitly stated those freedoms.  This is not
appropriate for the ShareAlike license.  If I'm fine with someone else
restricting the use of a work (based in whole or in part on mine...) I
would use the CC-BY license.

Some restrictions pretty clearly fall into the category of "Don't
Care".  If an author chooses CC-SA, I would doubt he would have a
problem with me requiring attribution on a work based on his, though I
would still be obliged to ask permission.  (Which I did, the one time I
came across a CC-SA work.  http://rtnl.org.uk/music/ if your curious.) 
So maybe in the license selection form, if the ShareAlike option was
activated, it would allow the user to select what the requirements were
for derivative works.  I can do a mock-up if anyone doesn't get what I
mean.  I don't want to make the licensing process any more complicated
than it is, but I feel that the proposed 2.0 drafts still need work
before their ready to be used.

Comments?

Luke Stodola
dxdt.org/audio/