Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 26 Nov 2005, at 02:37, j lipszyc wrote:

> I don't understand that. I agree that changes we make in 3.0 would  
> make
> also previously relased works GFDL compatible, but why you think  
> this is
> not legally possible?

BY-SA clause 4b states:

"You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly  
digitally perform a Derivative Work [...] under the terms of [...] a  
later version of this License with the same License Elements as this  
License, [...]"

So any 2.0 or 2.5 or work may be included in a 3.0-licensed  
derivative. But the 2.0 and 2.5 licenses do not include the author's  
permission to re-license the work either as FDL or under a license  
that allows FDL re-licensing.

Therefore BY-SA 3.0 cannot include FDL cross-licensing.

To borrow Greg's characters:

Alice licenses her essay on Localtown BY-SA 2.0.

Bob uses this essay to produce a travel guide to Localtown which he  
relicenses BY-SA 3.0 under 2.0's derivatives upgrade clause.

Carol corrects this guide, adds more information about Localtown, and  
uses the derivatives cross-licensing clause of 3.0 to relicense the  
work as FDL.

Some of Alice's work is now FDL. If Bob and Carol only add  
information to Alice's work rather than modifying it, then the whole  
of Alice's work is now FDL. But Alice has not given permission for  
her work to be FDL.

> > Let other licenses be made compatible with BY-SA.
>
> You know this not likely to be done.

Some things are worth working towards even if they are not popular.  
The EFF deprecated their music license in favor of the CC licenses,  
so it's not impossible.

> Not even in predictable future.

Some things are worth working towards even if they take time. The FSF  
managed to get the BSD license revised.

> Why? Because some CC actions make certain people uncertain about CC
> long-terms goals and behaviour.

Suddenly introducing a clause that allows work to be re-licensed will  
not improve doubters' confidence in CC.

> BY-SA license automatically updates
> itself to latest version. FSF have to trust CC to allow this for GFDL
> works. Without FSF trust - no two-way compatibility.
> As you probably know i strongly believe, that CC needs something  
> similar
> to Debian Guidelines, some kind of social contract we can treat as our
> constitution while crafting future licenses versions.

I agree.

> This may be a good starting point to gain FSF trust.
> But it's not going to work one side only. There is nothing wrong for
> BY-SA users to make their work GFDL compatible right now.

They can dual license as they have always been able to. If "but you  
cannot guarantee how derivatives will be licensed" is an argument  
against this then it is also an argument against allowing derivatives  
to be incompatibly re-licensed as part of the license itself.

Allowing BY-SA work to be taken and placed into a fragmented commons  
will not help reduce commons fragmentation.

> But future is
> different: we also have to trust FSF and believe, that any changes  
> they
> make to GFDL in future will not hurt current BY-SA users. FSF do  
> change
> their licenses. Such change as adding something similar to "invariant
> section" (that as you know that happened) may make CC users very  
> unhappy.
> So we need trust and sadly this is something we do not have.

If we had trust we wouldn't need licenses. :-)

> FSF removed
> all CC licenses from their lists. Lawrence still didn't answered
> questions about it (i understand he promised to do it in his series of
> emails, but this didn't happened yet).
> There is something more: Richard Stallman doesn't think, that license
> compatibility is a freedom, too.

Freedom of contract is a vitally important freedom. Incompatibility  
for the sake of it is a restriction on freedom. Since the FDL and BY- 
SA were written to address very different needs, they fall under the  
former not the latter.

> Software is different than texts of culture,

In what ways?

> and he simply do not have to deal with our problems.

Which problems?

> If there is program under non-free license he writes another one.

If there is an artwork under a non-free license I can make another one.

> If there is
> something under free, but GPL non-compatible license, he puts it into
> other directory.

CC and FDL work can be aggregated in this way I think.

> This can't be done in culture. You cannot air a movie
> with somen shots kept in other directory.

You can however run a cinema that shows both CC and non-CC movies,

> So he don't believe that license comatibility is actually something we
> should fight for, and how we are going to convince him without  
> mutual trust?

The current proposal is not "compatibility", it is capitulation. A  
one-way give-away of work.

> How this can be solved if we will work hard to gain mutual trust? I
> think there are two possible solutions. First is to have a written
> agreement about freedoms guaranteed by GFDL and CC BY-SA licenses.  
> This
> could be a base for two-way comaptibility.
> Even better will be license MERGE. If CC and FSF together will  
> worded a
> license which will suit needs of current GFDL and BY-SA users and made
> it next version of both - that will be something really, really good.

Because of the way the upgrade clauses in each license are worded,  
this cannot happen.

We are talking about merging a license written for computer manuals  
with a general remix culture license. Think about all the ways BY-SA  
makes it easy(er) to use work, then think about taking an FDL poem  
with invariant sections and translating it into a song in another  
language as part of a film.

> AFAIK without "invariant section" GFDL world is free (even if not
> perfect) so there is nothing wrong with it.

Invariant sections cannot be banned from FDL works derived from BY-SA  
work.

> I do not really care what
> license name is as long as it preserves freedoms i want my users to
> have.

Then depending on the social contract you expect for your users you  
may not want derivatives of their work being placed under the FDL  
rather than BY-SA.

> There is nothing wrong for CC to actively promote some other
> licenses than CC ones. Do we care about brand or freedom? If it's  
> brand
> - hell, better no for all of us.

CC already provide deeds and logos for the GPL and the LGPL.

The FSF and Wikipedia have very strong brands. But practical effects  
are far more important than brands. The practical effects of the FDL  
are different to the practical effects of BY-SA. And allowing work to  
be taken from By-SA and made FDL will not have the practical effect  
of defragmenting the commons, it will have the opposite effect.

- Rob.