Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting Stefan Tiedje <Stefan-Tiedje AT addcom.de>:

> The demand of compatibility is just the demand of creators who want to
> make derivative works out of different licensed sources.

It may be. Certainly I gnash my teeth each time I hit an image that is 
under the
FDL or NC-SA.

But once it becomes possible to move work or derivatives under a different
license, it becomes possible to choose a license for reasons other than
compatibility. To choose the "best" license for, say, giving as few 
rights away
as possible or for advertise one's political beliefs. BY-SA doesn't allow
advertising or proselytising the way the FDL does. And the CA license is
noncommercial...

The ability to keep derivatives of a work under the same license, where that
license's effects are well known, trusted, and better than the 
alternatives, is
key to building "the commons". Allowing derivatives to escape from that 
commons
to licenses with different effects doesn't make those licenses 
"compatible" and
doesn't help build the commons.

> The only way I
> see, is to ask those who use an incompatible license to allow the use
> under a different license and thats it. Might be tedious, but I don't
> believe in a 'one size fits all' license. (Otherwise there would be only
> one cc license, but its more than one for very good reasons)

Lawrence Lessig thinks otherwise :-) :

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709

The problem with wishing that BY-SA, FDL, FAL and BBC-CA were the same is that
they aren't. They are very different in their effects.

CC should concentrate on slowly converting projects to using their 
licenses, not
quickly converting their licenses to be usable by projects that have chosen
problematic licenses with no hope of return.

- Rob.