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cc-licenses - Re: Dual-licensing under the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons *-ShareAlike-*

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Evan Prodromou <evan AT bad.dynu.ca>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Dual-licensing under the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons *-ShareAlike-*
  • Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 13:16:00 -0500

On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 08:54 +0000, Rob Myers wrote:

> I think the important thing is that the license isn't exclusive. I
> think you can derive under either license, therefore you can derive
> under both.

That doesn't necessarily follow at all! Archie can marry Betty, or
Archie could marry Veronica, but that doesn't mean Archie can marry
Betty _and_ Veronica.*

I think the logical fallacy here comes from excessive reductionism:
trying to break up the dual-licensing of the derivative work as two
single-licensing events.

> Imagine you CC-NC a work, someone uses it and then wants to pay you to
> use i commercially. After paying you, they are breaking the terms of
> the NC license by using the work commercially, but that's OK because
> they have another license with you that covers that.

Absolutely. If either the GFDL or the by-sa allowed a dual-licensed
derived work, we'd be in the clear. If the by-sa allowed dual-licensed
derived works (say), we could ignore the GFDL and publish the
dual-licensed derived work under the terms of the by-sa. Or vice versa.
However, neither allows a dual-licensed derived work, and since we have
to use one or the other, we just can't do it.

Try looking at it this way: say I've made a dual-licensed work under the
by-sa 1.0 and the GFDL. You've made a derivative work, and you want to
relicense it under the by-sa 1.0 and the Design Science License. You
can't do that according to the rules of the by-sa, and you can't do it
according to the rules of the GFDL. Therefore, unless we make some other
agreement, you can't publish the dual-licensed by-sa/DSL work.

It's pretty easy to see that licensing derived works by-sa is OK, and
licensing derived works GFDL is OK, but dual-licensing derived works
by-sa/DSL is not. It's harder to see that dual-licensing derived works
by-sa/GFDL is not OK, either.

It's counter-intuitive, and it probably goes against the original
authors' desires. But I think the wording of these two licenses makes it
impossible without an additional agreement.

> Yes, this would be like a binary linking exception in a GPL licensing
> or a static linking clarification LGPL licensing. It might be good to
> have a text that just says "For the avoidance of doubt, you are given
> explicit permission to relicense derived works under both licenses."

I think it's necessary, actually. I believe that 99.99% of creators
would want this in the first place. IWBNI future versions of the CC
licenses and the GFDL would consider this possibility.

~ESP

* Depending on jurisdiction. Some restrictions may apply; see store
display for details.

--
Evan Prodromou .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/ ..O
evan AT bad.dynu.ca OOO




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