Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I do not believe there is any point to having a copyleft license for
> media which isn't strong.  Does anyone here disagree?

I'm not sure. There are strong arguments on both sides.

But before addressing that...

> Certainties the world does not yet YET ANOTHER free content license if
> it can be avoided.  The already existing myriad of CC licensing knobs
> already create confusion enough as is. :(

The trouble is, the CC-By-SA as it *is now* is a "weak copyleft" in the
sense intended here. So we aren't talking about adding "yet another"
license in order to introduce a "weak copyleft", but rather whether we
should add one in order to have the "strong copyleft" that you seem to want.

So, do you want the strong copyleft, or do you want to avoid a split?

The only other option would be to change what CC-By-SA means --
transition from a "weak copyleft" to a "strong copyleft" from one
version to the next.

I think that such a decision would likely be fraught with confusion and
opposed. Many people do not like the FSF's interpretation of the GFDL,
and indeed, that may be part of the reason why Wikipedia wants to
abandon it.

The thing is, that as things stand, some producers feel cheated by the
existing SA, but the changed one would make many consumers feel cheated.

OTOH, an "SA+" option would be more feasible, IMHO, because it would not
suffer from so many pre-conceptions -- no one would feel "cheated" by
it. Furthermore, by accentuating the distinction between SA and SA+, it
would make more artists aware of what they are giving up by choosing SA
instead of SA+, so fewer will feel cheated by it (though of course, it
is possible that they will simply abandon SA as useless).

The main thing, though, is that BOTH "SA" and "SA+" would be "free",
"commons" licenses, and it sure wouldn't hurt CC to expand on that front.

I should point out that the proliferation argument is somewhat weak in
this case, because the licenses would be compatible -- By-SA media
should be able to be combined with a By-SA+ work. The only difference is
that it doesn't become locked down by it -- you can also use it in (or
rather, alongside) other works.

By-SA+ may be too confining, though -- it could not be combined with a
GPL-licensed article, for example. Some have suggested that a
collective-binding copyleft should be a little more open-minded than the
adaptation-binding copyleft. I think that might be a good idea -- allow
the containing work to fall into a broader class of licenses, rather
than being strictly confined to By-SA+.

Cheers,
Terry

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