Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>:

> I have been thinking about the proposed CC- GFDL compatibility.
>
> My basic opinion is that it is good but worrisome as I posted to
> this list before.

It is not legally possible to produce a BY-SA that is FDL compatible. This is
due to the upgrade clause in BY-SA 2.x which means that FDL cross-licensing in
a newer BY-SA would apply to works placed under the older licenses that have
not given permission to be relicensed under non-CC licenses.

A BY-SA-CO could be made, but this would be yet another cultural 
license (YACL).

> [...]

> Change in CC license, in order to effectively establish a
> compatibility, should include answers to some of these
> problems - others could be left to the licensee, yet others
> could be dealt with FAQs.

Let other licenses be made compatible with BY-SA. It is the best licence and
should be regarded as a rallying point. Allowing work to be moved out of BY-SA
into a fragmented commons does not solve the problem of commons fragmentation.
Quite the opposite.

The GPL can be used with compatible licenses. But it takes the opposite 
approach
to the one being considered here. From the GPL FAQ:

''What does it mean to say a license is "compatible with the GPL".

   It means that the other license and the GNU GPL are compatible; you can
combine code released under the other license with code released under the GNU
GPL in one larger program.

   The GPL permits such a combination provided it is released under the GNU
GPL. The other license is compatible with the GPL if it permits this too. ''

Imagine if the FSF had modified the GPL to allow GPL-ed work to be 
taken and put
under similar licenses that people wrote. This would not have reduced
fragmentation either (unless Apache had acted as a Black Hole for the GPL as I
guess Wikipedia would for BY-SA).

- Rob.