Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gottfried Hofmann <toddd AT mypse.goracer.de>]

Well, in the past most free games used the GPL for both data and program 
code. Then some nit-pickers came and argued that they did not provide 
"sources" for their data files. For example no "source" for textures. 
Well, the source for a texture or an image in general is difficult to 
define.
Isn't an image even it's own source? And if not how can you determine 
what the source is?

Let's say someone draws a texture and offers it as a loss-less .tga or 
.png. Someone else wants the "source". If the artist used layers and 
stuff then most ppl might agree that the source is the multi-layered 
image in the native format of the program he used.
But how can you determine wether he really used layers? What if he did 
just draw atop and did not use layers? In this case the source file 
might possibly be the history of changes?
If someone renders a scenary with a raytracer and offers a .jpg of the 
rendered output, ppl surely will agree that the "source" is the scenary 
in the renderer's native format. But what if I take a picture of my car? 
The "source" might be the car. But no, I want offer my car for download 
on the internet :-) The other possibility: The picture is it's own 
"source". But why are there pictures with source and without source?

Someone mentioned that the source for a .mp3 might be the .wav. But what 
about movies? I guess I could provide "sources" for my short films, but 
only if you give me some terabytes of space on some provider without 
bandwidth limit...
And yes, when I apply certain audio filters to .wavs and then to the 
same file compressed in .ogg the results sometime differ - but is this 
the intention for providing .wavs?

In my opinion the GPL is the license of choice for people who want 
"sources" availble - whatever this might be. But for CC a source 
requirement would surely do more harm than good. And the gamers 
community might have to look for a new license...


> I think an additional license element to require source availability
> would be really useful.


Wouldn't this mean a lot more CC licenses? Attribution was removed as an 
option so that there are less licenses to chose from...