Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Friday, August 27, 2004, at 01:17PM, Wouter Vanden hove 
<wouter.vanden.hove AT pandora.be> wrote:

>toddd AT mypse.goracer.de wrote:
>
>
>> No, that's why many people are using CC licenses for data - the "source" 
>> ist
>> just not clearly defined for most data files while it is obvious for 
>> programs.
>
>source = allow editing

This is true but isn't the whole picture. If I provide an audio track, people 
can edit it by sampling and remixing it. If I provide the samples, score and 
lyrics under a Free license, they can do a lot more. One of the advantages of 
requiring people to provide source material rather than just editable 
end-products is that it ensures teh availability of and distributes a pool of 
source material for Free use. It populates the commons. This mirrors the 
effects of the GPL in this area.

I think the license feature would be CC-PS : "Provide Source". :-)

>> So if you want a license where people must share the "source", use the GPL.
>
>Even better is the GNU Free Documentation License, if it's not software

The GFDL requries editable formats, yes, but not the provision of source 
material. For a text document there may still be a distinction between 
editability and source if the document has been edited down (not uncommon) or 
was produced using unreleased source material.

- Rob.