Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Ricardo Gladwell <president AT freeroleplay.org>]

Rob Myers wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 30, 2004, at 09:51AM,
> Ricardo Gladwell <president AT freeroleplay.org> wrote:
> > > However, as I have argued before, by publishing content in closed, 
> > > proprietary formats you can also restrict the free flow of ideas. In the 
> > > case of Brand X proprietary word processor, whilst it may be legal to 
> > > only publish content in this format under the CCPL, the format itself 
> > > may not be open and thus it may be difficult if not impossible to use 
> > > the content unless you pay a large ammount of money for the application.
>
> If I release an image in, say, Photoshop format, I am limiting my
> audience.
> If, however, I convert the image to a non-proprietary format, I will
> lose some of the editability of the work. Which is more important,
> breadth of access or depth of access? (Hmmm. This parallels some
> current governmental debates on the arts here in the UK  :-)  ).

I'm not sure that it necessarily follows that, by converting to a open 
format, you will lose some of the editability of the work: by doing so 
in some situations you may increase the ability to edit the work by 
lowering the cost-of-entry. Also, open formats tend to be supported by 
more applications, so you are actually increasing the available 
applications choices with which content can be edited.

> In my own work this can best be illustrated by the case of some
> images I made about ten years ago using Adobe Dimensions (a *vector*
> 3D package). I couldn't have done the work any other way at that
> time, I can't convert the work to another editable format now, so
> what do I do? I can release the all-but-unreadable editable format,
> or I can render the work as a 2D vector image which is editable as
> far as it goes, but does not have the full editability of the 3D
> version. I'm about to make some more of this work in Illustrator CS,
> again using its unique capabilities.

I appreciate the technical problems with various formats. Of course, one 
simple solution is making the 'Transparency' or 'Source' clause optional.

But, is it really true in this day and age that you cannot convert from 
the Adboe 3D vector format to another?

> In the absence of a guiding principle of FSF-Freedom, this is a
> dilemma. A producer will want the fully editable format, they will
> probably have the software. A consumer will want the accessible
> format. I provide various formats, but even with scripts to derive
> various formats for me from the original, this takes effort, and
> with (say) a movie, the space requirements would become a
> consideration.

I don't think framing this argument in a CC versus FSF dichotomy is 
useful: this is not about the principals of the FSF, but about the 
ability to restrict access to creative derivatives of CCPL'd works by 
publishing them in proprietary formats. One assumes that the ability to 
create derivative works in Share Alike licensed works is something the 
CC considers important otherwise they wouldn't have create the SA CCPL.

There are two issues here, of course: the requirement to provide a 
modifiable copy of the content (aka GPL Source Clause) and the 
requirement to provide a format of the source in an 'open' format (aka 
FDL Transparency Clause). Since the later depends on the former, the 
Source clause, i.e. providing a modifable version of the content, is 
important so that you cannot, for example, publish in PDF without 
supplying the OO.org or MS Word document (which is not prohibited in the 
CCPL as it stands). As I've stated, the Transparency clause is also 
important but less so, and perhaps could be an optional clause.

Kind regards...

--
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president AT freeroleplay.org