Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Michael Olson" <mao AT sleepycat.com>]

I'm aware that this topic has been raised before; I read, for
example, the thread at

         
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2003-January/thread.html

I searched the discussion archives for more information, but
found nothing significant.  I don't believe that anyone in a
position to speak definitively for either the Creative Commons
or the FSF has issued a ruling on whether a particular CC
license is, or is not, compatible with the GPL.

This is a serious business issue for us here at Sleepycat, so
bear with me, please.

We distribute our Berkeley DB software under the Sleepycat
Public License, endorsed by opensource.org and confirmed by
the FSF as compatible with the GPL.  "Compatible" means that
you can create a combined work out of Berkeley DB, under our
license, and some other GPL'ed software, and distribute the
resulting work without violating the terms of either license.

We share the goals of the Creative Commons in promoting sharing
and encouraging commercial innovation using certain licenses.
We were early adopters of the Creative Commons Attribution-
ShareAlike license for some special-purpose documentation that
we produced last year.

For consistency, and in order to encourage third-party reuse of
some of our core documentation in new publications, we recently
decided to expand our use of the A-SA license.  As of our upcoming
4.3 release, we decided that we would release the entire Berkeley
DB documentation suite under the Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Berkeley DB is bundled with an enormous number of open source
and free software packages -- not least, Linux -- and that
ubiquity is valuable to the company.  It's crucial to our
continued success that we make it easy for the free software
community to bundle Berkeley DB with other software that is
licensed under the GPL.

Berkeley DB is, of course, not very useful absent the documentation.

We have recently received word from an informed party -- I would
not so far say that the person speaks authoritatively for the FSF,
but it's someone who's clueful on the issues and understands the
intricacies of GPL compatibility -- that the A-SA license is
incompatible with the GPL.

What this would mean, practically, is that GPL'ed software -- for
example (again), Linux -- would not be able to bundle the Berkeley
DB documentation.  That would create an impediment to use of
Berkeley DB in Linux and on Linux.  Over time, it could well result
in reduced reliance on Berkeley DB in popular open source packages.
That would be a bad outcome for Sleepycat.

So, baldly, here's the deal:  If the A-SA is incompatible with the
GPL, then Sleepycat will abandon the A-SA for all its documentation.
That would be unfortunate, I think.  I don't want to suggest that
the issues are inconsequential, here, but I do believe that both
the Commons and the FSF would be better served by a public statement
that two visionary organizations can work together to resolve
these issues, and to promote the interests of the open source and
free software communities.

We have a reasonable amount of time to see this solved.  Our 4.3
release, with the new licensing, is likely to go out in the beginning
of September.  More urgent, however, is my need to make a statement
to the community at large about Sleepycat's position on this issue.
What I'd like to say is that we are working with the FSF and the CC
to resolve the problem.

Glenn, Aaron, is the CC willing and able to engage the FSF on this
issue?  I am sure you can reach the leadership there already, but we
are happy to facilitate the discussion if necessary.

                                        mike