Development of Creative Commons licenses

[geni <geniice AT gmail.com>]

2008/6/29 Björn Terelius <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com>:
>The CC could equally well be considered to agree with me since it seem
>both texts have been used.

Did they or did they not accept the EFF's free music license being
merged with their's?

> IANAL, but if the license allow relicensing under future versions and
> a future version does not comply with some implicit intension I would
> not hold it for granted that a court would disqualify the later
> version. Stricly speaking you have permitted redistribution under
> _any_ future version whether or not it comply with the original
> intension. In any case, the intension is not an acctually part of the
> license text.

I'd hate to true and argue that one particularly when you consider the
name's of the licenses.

> One could just as well argue that any licensor who doesn't care about
> his/her own rights to the work place it in the public domain or write
> their own messy homebrew license.

The former doesn't happen in a useful manner and the latter is
unhelpful as far as free content is concerned.

>
>>
>>> If the licensor do trust the CC-community and wish to let the licensee
>>> choose which CC-version to use, I think he or she should say so
>>> explicitly by writing somthing like:
>>> "CC BY-SA 2.5 or (at your option) any later version"
>>
>> This rapidly results in what is best described as a horrific mess.
>> License compatibility issues are always a problem. I see no reason to
>> add to them.
>
> Why would it be a mess?
> A wiki or community that wants to always use the latest version can
> just request all contributors to accept that their contributions can
> be released under the present or any future version of CC.

now someone outside that community takes something makes a change and
locks it under a single version of the license. The wiki updates it's
license but can't then use derivatives of it's own work. This rather
goes against the whole point of copyleft.

> Again, IANAL, but I don't think it is possible to force an exact
> version of the license if the license text itself give away the right
> to use different licenses.

"not withstanding the above text only this version of the licence may
be used" wrap that up in legalese and off you go.

> To do that, one would have to restrict the
> rights granted by the license in which case it would no longer be a CC
> license. Creating a license that look like a CC but isn't would likely
> be a trademark infringement (assuming CC is a trademark).

So call it a modified creative commons license.

I'm sure I saw -md floating around at one point.

> The way I see it, it is easy for any licensor to allow the use of
> future licenses, but it would be very difficult if not impossible for
> the licensor to prohibit the use of a particular future license if he
> has already given away the right to use any future version.
>That is
> why I think that it would be better not to give away a general right
> to use future licenses.

I would argue that due to the way most of the licensing agreements are
made with are in Estoppel territory thus it would be hard to defend a
license that went against the intent of the original.

In any case a risk benefit analysis suggests that given the likely
minimal risks compared to the benefit of avoiding multiple
incompatible licenses (the CC/GFDL/FAL issues are annoying enough)
that updatable as standard is the best option for the time being.

-- 
geni