Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

This is my personal position on the 3.0 licenses.

I believe that Creative Commons has a poor reputation in the Free Software community. I believe that this reputation could be significantly improved if CC-licensed works were allowed into Debian GNU/Linux. Debian is one of three entities that "approve" licenses (Debian, FSF, OSI), and its decisions are held in high regard by the greater FLOSS community.

I'm glad that so many of the original problems we had with the 2.0 licenses have been solved. I think that parallel distribution is a similarly minute issue. I think that parallel distribution is a fair and equitable way to allow the Creative Commons message to expand with DRM-required platforms without endangering the freedoms of downstream users. The user has the same rights to the work (play, modify, distribute) as they would otherwise; in this case, the rights are spread across different file formats of the same work. In the case of source/object code for programs, we have another case where freedoms are distributed across different file formats of the same work.

I am concerned that we will be forced to take this decision later based on market pressures; I think it's better for the CC project to work out an equitable way to do it now, rather than being forced into it later.

I  reject the argument that no one is asking to be allowed to distribute on DRM-required platforms; Debian is asking for it. If no one was asking for it, the subject would have never come up.

I and others have worked extremely hard for more than 2 years to make these licenses compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. I'd like to thank Mia Garlick and Larry Lessig for all their effort in this matter; also the members of the Debian Creative Commons Workgroup and other debian-legal members who've helped get this process moving.

Thanks,

~Evan