Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mia Garlick <mia AT creativecommons.org>]

drew - thank you and yes, this is why we have included the "including  
but without limitation" language in there. we want to reassure  
everyone participating in the CC licensing system that we are only  
going to declare as compatible those licenses which guarantee the  
same freedoms — we're not going to make BY-SA compatible with BY-NC- 
SA for example (i hear several hearts momentarily stop beating just  
at the very thought)...

but we still have to reserve some leeway to review other terms and  
conditions of the licenses.  for example, the FDL does not contain a  
limitation of liability provision and expressly invalidates anything  
other than a warranty disclaimer being included with an FDL licensed  
work.  this is a main area of exposure to CC licensors preventing CC  
from enabling one-way compatibility.  by way of further example, the  
BBC Creative Archive license could be said to guarantee the same  
freedoms as the CC BY-NC-Sa license *but* (and its a very important  
but at that) it contains a jurisdiction limitation...


On Feb 12, 2007, at 2:43 PM, drew Roberts wrote:

> On Monday 12 February 2007 10:12 am, James Grimmelmann wrote:
> > Mia Garlick wrote:
> > > the statement is on the compatible licenses page in addition to  
> > > being
> > > in the license. in relation to (b) — the language as included in  
> > > both
> > > the page and the license does, imho, limit those licenses that CC  
> > > can
> > > approve as compatible b/c CC can only approve a license as  
> > > compatible
> > > which at least meets these conditions.
> >
> > I am skeptical that the phrase "including without limitation"
>
> I am not up to par right now, but wouldn't including but without  
> limitatoin
> mean that those have to be true but they can apply other criteria  
> whichthey
> have not listed?
>
> > can be
> > read to put any limit on the licenses that CC can approve.  I  
> > think my
> > concern is that that phrase tries to have matters both ways.  It's a
> > restriction of compatibility to those licenses that really are
> > equivalent, but it still wants to make CC's determination (rather  
> > than
> > actual equivalence) the canonical indication of compatibility.
>
> snip...
> > Could the language in the license read something more like:
> >
> > "Creative Commons Compatible License" means a license that is  
> > listed at
> > http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses that (i) explicitly
> > permits the relicensing of derivatives of works made available under
> > that license under this License, and (ii) has been approved by  
> > Creative
> > Commons as being essentially equivalent to this License.  Creative
> > Commons will approve those and only those licenses that, in its
> > judgment, contain terms that have the same purpose, meaning and  
> > effect
> > as the License Elements of this License."?
>
> This would force them to approve all licenses that meet these terms  
> even if
> they have other objections. I think that is what the including but  
> without
> limitation language is meant to address. Naturally CC's  
> representatives can
> speak for it.
> > I still have misgivings about including the second sentence in the
> > license, but this approach makes clearer that it's a statement about
> > CC's intentions, rather than a condition that's part of the license
> > agreement between the parties to the license. "In its judgment" or  
> > some
> > similar discretionary language also seems clearer than "including
> > without limitation" in indicating that CC must consider the  
> > question in
> > the first instance, but that its decision is final.
> >
> > James
>
> all the best,
>
> drew
> --
> (da idea man)
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