Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] cc-by-sa and gpl

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Prodromos Tsiavos" <p.tsiavos AT lse.ac.uk>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>, <adam AT xs4all.nl>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] cc-by-sa and gpl
  • Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 20:42:26 +0300

I would agree with Rob on dissuading you from using dual licensing, as it would only cause the same (and perhaps even more complicated problems) in the second generation of derivative works.

best,
pRo

----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Myers" <rob AT robmyers.org>
To: <adam AT xs4all.nl>; "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] cc-by-sa and gpl


(I am not CC, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

adam hyde wrote:

It would seem the GPL would not be 'compatible' under these terms as the
GPL does not explicitly permit: "the relicensing of derivatives of works
made available under that license under a particular Creative Commons
license"

That is correct.

The gpl does not do this. However, how does the CC-GPL fit into this
picture? :
http://creativecommons.org/license/cc-gpl

Its the GPL with a CC wrapper...is the CC-GPL considered to be living
within the CC family of licenses? If so, then the CC-GPL is 'compatible'
and the question is answered.

Ignore CC-GPL for the purpose of this discussion, that is just CC trying
to explain the GPL to people. It's a very good idea (CC-FDL anybody?)
but can be confusing.

is there anyone that can clarify this?

Just to retour...My specific question is:

Can content under the CC-BY-SA (3.0) be distributed under the GPL? ie.
Is the GPL or 'CC-GPL' a 'similar' or 'compatible' license as per the
license statement :
"you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a
compatible license."
>
anyone want to make me a happy camper with a categorical yes or no? ;)

Categorically: no.

The GPL is not compatible with BY-SA, and is unlikely to be declared
compatible.

See above. ;-)

If you are the original licensor you could dual-license under BY-SA and
GPL, but that's a very bad idea.

The reason _why_ this is an interesting question for me is that
documentation about free software is often written in CC BY-SA. If this
material can be then distributed under the GPL then the docs could be
distributed with source code without causing developers extra license
headaches.

You can distribute BY-SA material with GPL material. The FDL was
designed to be applied to documentation distributed with GPL-ed
software, and the principle is the same. This is aggregation, and is
fine under the GPL.

So a GPL-licensed piece of software with BY-SA documentation should be
absolutely fine. Unless it breaks the rules of a particular distro (e.g.
Debian).

- Rob.
_______________________________________________
cc-licenses mailing list
cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses


Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic
communications disclaimer:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page