Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 29 November 2006 05:50 pm, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:41:52 -0500 James Grimmelmann wrote:
> > Rob Myers wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > At the moment of initial distribution. The GPL requires that source
> > > be  made available for longer (if we must use that comparison), and
> > > why.
>
> No, the GPL (v2) gives mroe than one option (see section 3.): roughly
> (a) accompany the binary with source (or make available source from the
> same place as the binary, even without forcing anyone to download it)
> *or* (b) accompany the binary with an 3-year offer to give anyone source
> (at cost of distribution) *or* (c) pass on the offer you received (only
> if you distribute in a non-commercial manner).

I don't think you have this right at all. If you ship binary and source 
together, however you do so so that the person you distribute to gets both, 
you are done. I don't think you are done if you make both available but only 
distribute the binary to the other party.

Do you officially represent the FSF views on the matter in any official way 
when you state this? If not, would you care to put it to them for their 
clarification?
>
> Hence there are three possible ways to comply with the license, and only
> the first one is a free restriction.  I mean: if (a) didn't exist as an
> option, the GNU GPL would include a non-free restriction (that is to
> say: (b) OR (c)).
>
> So, if you choose to make the source available at the time of the binary
> distribution (option a), you then have no other obligations in the
> future.
>
> > This is an important issue.  If you think that the parallel
> > distribution  clause should be rewritten to require longer
> > availability more  explicitly, that's a great topic to discuss.
>
> Taking what I said above into account, I don't think that introducing
> such a restriction to the parallel distribution proviso would be a good
> idea.
>
> [...]
>
> > That said, my understanding of the GPL's availability clause is that
> > one  can either "accompany" the work with source (and thus, the
> > availability  can terminate immediately) or offer to provide source
> > for three years  (still well shorter than many of the "all
> > unencumbered copies have been  lost" scenarios being offered to argue
> > against parallel distribution).
>
> It seems that your understanding is right: see above.

Nope, if you only distribute the binary even if the source was sitting on the 
same server, the source did not accompany the the binary as part of the 
distribution process.

If it did, the other party could immediately throw it away... but in your 
example it doesn't.

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
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