Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Mia Garlick wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2007, at 11:00 AM, drew Roberts wrote:
>>Since the GPL is the big copyleft license and it has source code  
>>clauses, if
>>you are trying to set up the framework, has there been any  
>>discussoin as to
>>how BY-SA might handle this?

But note that the question is one of allowing By-SA work to be
relicensed as GPL -- not the reverse. In this case, one could explicitly
allow the source code requirement to be added.

> there has never been any suggestion of making software licenses  
> compatible with content licenses and there is no reason to start that  
> discussion now.

But of course, the GPL has been used for content as well as code.

In particular, vector graphic artwork (and likewise, MIDI music) have
definite "source code" versions for which the GPL's source requirements
are perfectly obvious.

IMHO, it would be reasonable (but not necessarily essential) to consider
re-licensing work from By-SA to GPL in such cases:

E.g:

musical instrument patches (By-SA)
   combined with
MIDI music (GPL)
  |
  V
rendered music (GPL), must include MIDI source and patches

(or)

PNG or JPG images (By-SA)
   combined with
SVG graphic (GPL)
  |
  V
rendered PNG graphics (GPL), must include SVG and resources


As I read the revised By-SA language, these two options would become
legal if CC chose to post the GPL as a "compatible license".

The question is whether posting it would violate the CC's social
contract with CC licensors -- is the additional source code
requirement a negligible detail, or a substantial change of intent?

Obviously no license can be regarded as precisely the same in intent as
another (unless they are actually the same license), so there is
obviously always going to be a judgement call in which licenses CC
decides to declare "compatible".

For myself, I can't think of any work I've licensed under By-SA that I
would object to seeing re-licensed to GPL in this way (the GPL is "free
enough" IMHO, even if this makes it "less free").

As a point of interest: does anyone reading this disagree with that?
(I.e.: Would you object to relicensing any of your content from By-SA to
GPL?)


One possible subtlety that could be added is to permit this re-licensing
ONLY when it is forced by the licensing of other content.  IOW, what if
you allowed this:

Work "alpha"  - created by author "A", licensed By-SA: alpha (A/By-SA)
Work "beta"   - created by author "B", licensed GPL:   beta  (B/GPL)

Hypothetical derivatives "epsilon", "theta", "eta", created by
contributor C, including original contribution "delta"

CASE                         RESULT            ALLOWED LICENSES

alpha + delta             => epsilon           By-SA (only)
beta  + delta                theta             GPL (only)
alpha + beta + delta         eta               GPL*

*By special CC compatibility statement.

The "GPL" on work "eta" is the exception permited by special permission
from CC (this work is currently illegal to distribute under ANY license,
without special permission from the authors of both "alpha" and "beta").

If the existing language is used, then work "epsilon" may be released
under either By-SA or GPL -- but I would propose disallowing that case.

IOW, only if the contributor incorporates pre-existing GPL work is he
allowed to do change the license to GPL (and perhaps only if that is the
only way to legally distribute the result).

However, this is obviously complicated. It'd be simpler to disallow
conversion to GPL altogether (but there are existing works which would
be caught in limbo in that case). My present advice for this situation
is to request permission to relicense to By-SA from the authors in this
case.

>>Just guessing, but I doubt you will ever get the
>>GPL to allow conversion to BY-SA without dealing with that source  
>>code issue.

I'd go so far as to say that is definite.

>>It is not going to fly to take GPL code, make a derivative and only  
>>realease
>>the derivative as a binary under BY-SA. Nor with obfuscated code  
>>for that
>>matter.

No -- it's clear that this would be a one-way conversion if anything.

However, I anticipate that CC will shy away from it entirely.

OTOH, *any* uni-lateral compatibility statement would be bad for the
commons of By-SA works, as it would encourage "bleed out" of works from
CC licenses to others (and not allow reconversion back to CC).

I would hope that, in the cases where CC decides to post a license as
"compatible", that there is a reciprocal statement being made by the
parties controlling that other license.

Should THAT be regarded as essential?

Cheers,
Terry

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