Development of Creative Commons licenses

[wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>]

Hi. Thank you again for replying to my long and 
technical post. 

Terry Hancock wrote:

>Yes, it does. Ian is part of the public to which the work
>may be released under the terms of the CC-BY-SA 2.0, 2.5, or
>3.0. If the work is released under the CC-BY-SA 2.0, he is
>entitled to release it under CC-BY-SA 3.0, to himself, as
>well as other people.  As a result, he then has the freedoms
>granted by CC-BY-SA 3.0, including (assuming such a grant is
>included), the ability to release under GFDL.
>
>Since this is possible, he can effectively release straight
>to GFDL, with the implication that it is also released under
>CC-BY-SA 3.0 (it's like a dual license).

Well, I have been thinking almost exactly the same as you. But 
in the last post, I wanted to demonstrate that there seemed to be 
a wholly different interpretation, with opposite consequence, and that 
interpretation seemed to be more faithful to the letter of the licenses. 

Would you mind if I try to convince you? 

In this example, Greg's poem is under CC-BY-SA 2.0, and 
Helen's lyric based on the poem is under CC-BY-SA 3.0. 

And the central question is when CC-BY-SA 2.0 says 
Ian "may distribute, ... a Derivative Work only under 
... a later version of this License with the same License 
Elements as this License..." does that mean that Ian 
can now switch the license of Greg's poem from 2.0 to 3.0? 
Or, as I suggested, is it simply requiring Ian to release 
his contribution to the book under one of the licenses, while 
keeping the Greg's part still under 2.0? 

I believe you support the former interpretation. I see one problem 
with that interpretation nowadays.

(1) CC-BY licenses do not have that "restriction" for derivative 
works at all. CC-BY has restrictions related to copyright notice, 
attribution, URI, etc., but not regarding the license choices for 
a derivative work. 

(2) A simple reading of this fact would be, "derivative 
of a CC-BY'd work could be licensed in any way, full copyright or 
very liberal license." In case of CC-BY-SA'd work, its derivative 
has to be licensed under one of SA licenses (or GFDL). 

(3) If this were the case, one consequence is 
that when Bob *minimally* change Alice's CC-BY'd short story 
to make it a derivative short story, Bob can release the whole 
piece under, say, a license which does not require any attribution. 
By that move by Bob, most of Alice's piece is now usable without 
attribution to her. Is this what CC-BY allows? I doubt. And this 
is the problem with that interpretation. 

The fact that term "restriction" is used for the SA licese's 
provision regarding derivative work's license choices means, 
instead, this: CC-BY does not impose restriction regarding 
how Bob releases "Bob's creative contribution in the derivative work 
Bob created using Alice's work" (i.e. Bob's part). It is up to Bob 
how Bob licenses Bob's part. But whatever license Bob chooses, 
Alice's work remains under the same license, CC-BY. In contrast, SA 
liceses restricts Bob's release of Bob's part. It has to be under a 
SA license (and/or GFDL). But again, Alice's part is still under the 
same, initial SA license. So if Alice's work was under SA 2.0, and 
Bob chooses SA 3.0, Alice's part embedded in Bob's derivative is 
usable only under SA 2.0, not 3.0. 

That's how I came to interpret what SA licenses says. 


>Whether this is desireable or not is an issue for CC (and
>this list) to discuss -- has Greg been unfairly taken
>advantage of by this sequence of events?

I agree with you on this. I personally prefer more compatibility, 
the possibility of CC-BY-SA 2.0/2.5'd works to be ported to 
GFDL via derivative works. (Not that I do not have concerns 
about the proposed compatibility plan, but I will not repeat them 
here). 

One way to make clear that this kind of uncertainty exists 
regarding future license options for Licensees is to have a 
phrase like this .. 
"You may distribute, perform, ... a Derivative Work ... GFDL, and/or 
other compatible licenses. Compatible licenses will be specified 
in the later version of this License having the same License Element 
as this License."

This makes clear that Author, by using CC-BY-SA licenses, is facing 
an uncertainty what type of licenses options will be available for 
his work's derivatives in the future. 

Best Regards, 


Tomos