Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 28 Aug 2004, at 01:57, Gottfried Hofmann wrote:

> > > 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". :-)
>
>
> That's a problem because it's not obvious what's a "source". For 
> example:
> I released all my stuff GPL until someone told me I have to provide 
> "sources". In my understanding, the source for a sound is the sound 
> itself and the source for an image is the image itself.
> But this guy told me that the source for an image is all the layers 
> and stuff you used to create it. So the source for a sound file is the 
> original file plus the history of all changes you made to it.
> There are two major problems with that:
>
> 1st: What a about a foto of a car for example? The "source" would be 
> the car itself, which I of course cannot provide.

The source would be the original data file, not cropped or reduced in 
resolution. If there is genuinely no difference between source and 
"binary" (the finished product), you just distribute it as is (IANAL). 
Plenty of non-compiled computer scripting languages fall into this 
category.

For a physical car the source is the designs, which is an interesting 
idea, but the car company would have to make the car "Open". People 
would get confused if it didn't have a sunroof... :-)

> 2nd: The "source" for my audio files can not be provided because I 
> cannot save the history with my program

If you are editing a single large sample (or single large pixmap, or 
single large text file, etc.), again that's the source and the binary 
in one. If however you're using a multi-track editor or sample 
sequencer, and/or you've used samples to assemble the file, there's 
source.

> That's why I wanted to switch to CC, but unfortunately, CC 2.0 does 
> not provide CC-SA anymore, but that is another story...

Heh. :-) Apparently you can pre-emptively waive attribution on SA.

> I'd recommend anyone who wants his "sources" to be shared to use GPL. 
> It was made for this purpose :-)

Yes. In particular it passes on this requirement, which even if you 
choose to provide source with CC, you can't require of others.

- Rob.