Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>:

> Mark William Darbyshire wrote:
> > I've only just taken an interest in this new version of the licence and
> > signed up to the mailing list. I hope I'm not saying anything stupid that
> > hasn't already been covered!
> >
> > If the GPL was a compatible licence, that would mean that a derivative work
> > could, for example, be a GPL licensed game based on a film or story
> > released
> > under the BY-SA. I personally would love an aspiring programmer to pick up
> > on my creativity and carry it into the world of gaming, and the GPL
> > would be
> > a good licence for this to be done by. Imagine some programmers making a
> > game based on, as an example, Elephant's Dream (taking advantage of the
> > available 3D animation files used to make the film), which would be
> > released
> > under the GPL and could be bundled with a GPL licensed operating system.

Under GPL-3, the BY license of Elephants Dream might be compatible with 
the GPL
and so the source files could be included without any worry.

> In most cases, there is no problem with the existing licenses. A game
> engine's copyleft license does not affect the content it plays, nor does
> the sharealike content license affect the engine used to play it.

Exactly. To argue otherwise goes against the freedom of users to pursue 
whatever
non-software ends they wish with the software.

It is possible to distribute game engines without modules. Web browsers are
distributed without web sites and word processors without essays. And content
is not functionality. If a program won't provide its functionality unless it
can load an exact PNG or SVG icon then it is very poorly written. I botched an
Inkscape build the other week and it loaded and ran quite happily without its
icons.

The solution is not to confuse code and content but to draw a line that 
protects
both. Free Software and Free Culture should respect each other.

Where an artwork is programmatic it should obviously be free software. I have
often argued this to other artists.

> OTOH, there may be some edge cases where this is not true. I tried to
> come up with examples that challenge this content/player boundary.

The cases I am most familiar with where the licenses seem to clash are tight
interweaving of code and "content" such as dynamic HTML pages or Flash
projects, and where the content is a program such as a PostScript or 
LaTeX file
of a book. I think the former should be able to be factored out with existing
licenses. I haven't thought enough about the latter to say what should be done
there.

Game modules containing scripts are the same case as game engines containing
modules. You can separate them into code and content and license accordingly.

- Rob.