Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Isabelle Vodjdani <vodjdani.isabelle AT numericable.fr>]

Hi,

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay told us about the project of a new version 3.0 
of the CC licenses. She wonders if it could be an opportunity for 
drafting the CC by-sa licence in a way that would bring it to be 
compatible with the Free Art License 
(http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/) 
<http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/%29>.

The aim is to be allowed to mix together some works offered under the CC 
by-sa with other works offered under the FAL, and then, to put the 
resulting derivative work under one of these two licences.

So, on October 27, we met in Paris and studied such a possibility. There 
were Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (lawyer and French translator of the CC 
licenses), Mélanie Clément Fontaine (lawyer and co-author of the Free 
Art License), Antoine Moreau and Isabelle Vodjdani (artists and 
co-authors of the Free Art License, artlibre.org), Antoine Pitrou and 
Raphaël Rousseau (Libroscope.org).

Actually, there are two obstacles to the compatibility :

1- the Free Art License dosen't allow one to mix a work ruled by another 
License with a work ruled by the FAL (article 7).

Historically, the FAL was one of the first non-software free licences, 
drafted on july 2000. At that moment, it seemed safer to forbid such 
hybridations. But we are now considering the possibility of drafting a 
new term fixing the general conditions upon which it would be possible 
to mix other works with a work ruled by the FAL. Afterwards, this can 
enable us to set up and maintain a list of licenses considered 
officially compatible with the FAL. This constitutes a preliminary workshop.

2- The CC by-sa dosen't fit into the criteria of freedom as conceived by 
the Free Art License :

The main problems pointed out are :
# the fact that the drafting of CC licenses is quite confuse and can 
generate some conflictual interpretations
# the compatibility between the several national adaptations of CC 
licenses means that a compatibility between the FAL and the French CC 
by-sa would mean, as well, a compatibility between the FAL and other 
national adaptations whose significations and legal consequences are not 
clear for us.

We thus came to the conclusion that the compatibility between the two 
licenses required that the CC by-sa should adopt the terms of the FAL.
Melanie Dulong de Rosnay would like us to itemize pricisely these 
problems in order to be able to submit them to the direction board of 
CC. This would constitute another workshop.


Considering that these two workshops promise to be a bit long, Melanie 
Dulong de Rosnay also suggested to add a new term in the CC by-sa 
specifying that one can mix several works ruled by the FAL and the CC 
by-sa, at the understanding that the resulting derivative work has to be 
ruled by the Free Art License.

Besides being one of the first non-software free licenses, the FAL is 
worded so as to apply to digital as well as non-digital works of art 
(and, more generally, autographic as well as allographic works of art). 
Truly inspired by the GNU GPL - in spirit as well as in its conformance 
to the Berne convention, or the simplicity of its wording -, the FAL is 
officially recommended by the FSF for non-software free contents (see 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#OtherWorks 
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#OtherWorks%29>.)

If you have any suggestion about this workshop, you're welcome.

Isabelle