Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

I am not a lawyer, I am nothing to do with Creative Commons, this is not 
legal advice.

On Sunday, September 26, 2004, at 04:20PM, Branko Collin <collin AT xs4all.nl> 
wrote:

>- Licenses and copyright statements were often embedded in the 
>compiled game code. Recompiling twenty year old software is often not 
>an option. Also, from a 'museum curator' point of view, modifying the 
>original code seems to me like putting a sticker "No photographs!" on 
>the Nightwatch.

The CC licenses are good for binary-only distributions and abandonware, as is 
the CC system for dedicating a work to the Public Domain if people want to do 
that.

For new distributions and for old games where people have the code and want 
to share the code, the GPL might be better. Since you state that one of your 
goals is to drive the creation of new work, having source available is a good 
idea and the GPL ensures this. BY-SA doesn't ensure source code availability.

I don't know about changing the copyright and license notices. An 
accompanying note may be sufficient as long as it makes clear that it 
supercedes the notice on the binary.

>In other words, where do we stand on due diligence?

I've no idea, but see the FSF's method: get a copyright assignment from the 
author, and a waiver of interest from their employer. In your case the author 
probably isn't assigning copyright. But you'll still want to get them to put 
in writing that the game is theirs, that they have the rights to it, that 
they are placing it under license X and that they understand the meaning of 
the license they are placing it under. Email may or may not be legally 
admissible evidence where you are, but you can't beat something in writing.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legal-Matters

- Rob.