Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Björn Terelius <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com>]

Terry Hancock wrote:
> 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.
>   
My comment was slightly incorrect, but yours is too.

If a program is licensed under GPL (without specifying a version number) 
then _any_ version of the license may be used. On the other hand if an 
explicit version number is given then that license is fixed and future 
versions can not be used.
> 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.
>   
Which is exactly what I suggested.

Regards
Bjorn