Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

On Wed, 2006-09-08 at 14:21 -0700, Mia Garlick wrote:

> Consequently, CC is currently not proposing to include this new  
> parallel distribution language as part of version 3.0; however,  
> because it is not clear whether the Debian community will declare the  
> CC licenses DFSG-free without it and because it represents an  
> interesting proposal, we felt that it was appropriate to circulate  
> the proposal as part of the public discussions of version 3.0.

I wanted to address this part of the issue.

As longtime members of this mailing list know, the fact that
CCPL-licensed works aren't allowed in Debian has cast a poor light on
the licenses, especially among members of the Free Software community.
Getting the "Debian stamp of approval" will definitely help the profile
of the licenses and the project among this very natural constituency.

After the 3.0 licenses are finalized, and works licensed under them are
candidates for inclusion in Debian, the project will come to a decision
on whether the works will be allowed in the distribution.

As Mia pointed out, the standing of anti-DRM clauses in licenses is
still murky within the Debian project. If there is a parallel
distribution language in the 3.0 licenses, I'm almost 100% sure that
Attribution 3.0 and Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0-licensed works will be
allowed in Debian. If there is not parallel distribution language, then
I am optimistic but far less sure.

So, please consider whether the problems you have with parallel
distribution are worth blowing this opportunity. Debian and Creative
Commons will probably never again be able to muster the time and effort
that we have over the last 18 months to make things work.  

And I also doubt that Free Software advocates will look kindly on a
project that had a chance to make their licenses compatible with the
DFSG, but decided not to.

I'd appreciate it if people would factor this into their decisions.

~Evan

-- 
Evan Prodromou -- http://evan.prodromou.name/

"By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
of on the same terms." -- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"