Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Wednesday, March 09, 2005, at 02:44AM, Todd A. Jacobs 
<nospam AT codegnome.org> wrote:

>If I use a BY-NC work, release the derivative as BY (without "intent" to
>make money), then I'm technically free to do so. 

Absolutely not. You do not have a lciense to do so.

Let's look at the human readable version of BY-NC:

"For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license 
terms of this work."

Then let's look at the legal code:

"3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, 
Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, 
perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise 
the rights in the Work as stated below: 
[...]
to create and reproduce Derivative Works; "

Which is qualified by:

"4. Restrictions.The license granted in Section 3 above is expressly made 
subject to and limited by the following restrictions: 
[...]
You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in 
any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial 
advantage or private monetary compensation."

So you can make derivative works but you must let people know that the 
original work was NC, and if you try to relicense the work non-NC you are in 
breach of the license.

The reason this is the case is that the work is copyrighted, not public 
domain, and the CC license gives you a license to use that work as long as 
you observe the terms of the license.

The difference between NC and SA is that under NC I don't have to offer my 
own work under NC, I can make the work closed as long as I don't charge for 
it. 

You could add SA to the derived work, as that does not interfere with the BY 
and NC terms, but you could not remove BY or NC as you would lose your 
license to use the work.

This would be like not observing the attribution clause in a BSD-original 
license on code you've got from a project fork. 

- Rob.