Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Björn Terelius wrote:
>> The FSF, CC, EFF and the people behind the FAL would appear to
>> disagree with you. So would most of the copyright cabal on wikipedia
>> but they are more used to dealing with people who are impossible to
>> trace and/or dead.
> 
> I know the FSF's position, but the CC is not forced to follow FSF
> ideology. I, in fact, hesitate to release code under GNU GPL partly
> because such a release would imply my trust in all future versions of
> GPL.

This is incorrect. The GPL contains no version-upgrade clause (neither
for the original work nor for derivatives -- unlike the CC licenses
which provide for derivatives, but not the original work, to be upgraded).

By convention, most people using GPL place an "or later versions" clause
in the license grant statement which provides for upgrades. It is by no
means required, however, and there are a number of important
GPL-licensed projects (the most prominent being the Linux O/S kernel)
which do NOT provide for automatic upgrades.

The FSF and GNU project have made it clear that they would _prefer_ that
people voluntarily apply this upgrade clause, but their license does not
include it.

Please note that there is absolutely NOTHING preventing an author from
using a similar "or later version" clause in the grant of a CC license,
which would have exactly the same effect. Authors who want to allow
their works to be upgraded automatically to later licenses can do so
now, without any changes to the license (only in the statement applying
the license to the work).

It would probably be reasonable for the licensing wizard on the CC
website to ask if you want this, and produce an appropriate license
grant statement. But it's not fundamentally an issue with the license
itself, and I think that's the best way for it to be.

Cheers,
Terry

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