Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam AT codegnome.org>]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 02:59:23PM +0000, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:

> I'm not suggesting that you prevent users from publishing in, for
> example, PDF format. Only that an modifiable version of the document
> should also be provided in a format that has not financial or legal
> requirements to modify.

The GFDL has such a requirement. I don't remember seeing a similar
clause in the CC licenses. 

Should it be a requirement? Well, that's a tough question. The intent of
the CC licenses is to free the *ideas*, not the tangible form. So,
there's really no requirement to make the tangible form easily
accessible and/or modifiable.

One argument against adding such a clause would be that it may add a
burden to the content creators, e.g. having to maintain multiple
versions of something. Is that an unreasonable burden? I think that's a
potentially interesting discussion, with merit on both sides.

As I understand it, the GFDL is primarily intended to make FOSS
documentation easily and freely accessible to the community. It
therefore needs stronger protections against non-FOSS formats. I'm a
little dubious about whether something similar is necessary or required
when addressing a broader scope of artistic works.

For example, if you license a painting under the attribution license,
theoretically people would then be free to make prints, photos, or
derivative works based on it. How would you make your painting, or its
derivatives, "easily accessible?" 

I'll grant you this may be an edge case, but when talking about a
broadly-applicable licence, I think it's important to look at the big
picture, and not just focus on one form of artistic expression.

-- 
Find my Techno-Geek Journal at http://www.codegnome.org/geeklog/