Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>:

> If this is the case, combined with the proposed change to make
> CC-BY-SA one way compatible (portable) to GFDL, even the works
> released originally by SA 2.0 could be relisensed to GFDL, making
> it usable by GFDL terms alone (as opposed to two license requirements
> needing to be fulfilled).

I think that the entire 2.0 work could ultimately end up in a GFDL work, yes.

Here's how:

Alice licenses her poem under BY-SA 2.0.
Bob adds extra material to the beginning and end of the poem, and 
releases this
derivative work under BY-SA 3.0.
Carol adds even more material to the beginning and end of the poem and
relicenses the derivative of Bob's derivative under the FDL.

It is important to note that in LawyerVision (tm), the original work 
hasn't been
relicensed, just a derivative work that happens to contain the material of the
original work. (I think. IANAL.)

What you could not do is relicense Alice's poem under GFDL without making a
derivative in some way. But IMO that becomes irrelevent if making a derivative
still allows the entire original work to be contained in a relicensed work.

It may be that it is better for some BY-SA work to be incidentally 
relicensed in
this way than for licensors to not be surprised. Or that such 
relicening is very
unlikely and the damage of the few cases where it is a problem will be vastly
outweighed by the cases where it is good for the community as a whole. But
these arguments go against CC's emphasis on personal rights and personal
choice.

- Rob.