Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Evan Prodromou wrote:
>  On Fri, 2006-11-08 at 19:04 -0500, Terry Hancock wrote:
> > Of course, this is somewhat moot. Why are they using a CC license
> > for software? Use the GPL instead, it's much more clear cut on
> > this issue.
>
>  The example this started with actually had a game that included
>  by-2.0-licensed media, but that detail seems to have gotten lost.

Games can be sensibly divided into "content" and "engine". The
"engine" is an executable, the "content" is the data the engine
works on. The copylefts of content and engine do not affect
each other. Thus it is perfectly sensible to have a GPL engine
running CC content. (In fact, this is exactly the licensing I'm using
on a project of my own).

Other examples of the same dichotomy exists: a word processor,
versus the document processed, a compiler versus the programs
it compiles, etc.

>  There are already game projects that are using CC licenses for level
>  designs, interstitial video, graphics, and audio, although the game
>  engine itself uses the GPL or something similarly program-oriented.

Right.  The point is that the GPL takes care of your source
requirement, so the content is just content and CC requirements
are generally adequate for that.  So it's sort of irrelevant whether
the CC licensing would force source distribution, because the
GPL should take care of that.

OTOH, I like where parallel distribution retains the non-DRM
requirement.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com