Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 6:56 AM, drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 10 December 2011 19:08:03 Kim Tucker wrote:
>> http://wikieducator.org/Libre_Puro_License
>
> "Redistributions under this license must be in a free file format
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_file_format) and fully editable with 
> libre
> software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). "
>
> I would say that actually makes it a non-Free license as one is not Free to
> make hard copies.
>
> It would need to be tweaked some to have that only apply to digital copies
> somehow.

You're right, this would be a bug in Libre Puro. One can quibble with
it, but 
http://freedomdefined.org/Permissible_restrictions#Protection_of_freedoms
is part of the definition of freedom we've agreed to stick with at
least for BY-SA, and it carefully says "For digital files..."

Any additional conditions, free or not, can be a barrier to
compatibility. For example, I don't understand how
http://wikieducator.org/Libre_License#Preamble_for_the_Libre_Puro_License
can claim that CC BY-SA is a compatible license, as it does not
require a free format.

I say this not to critique Libre Puro, as this is not the right place
(maybe I'll leave some comments on their wiki), but because details of
staying within the definition of free cultural works (for BY and
BY-SA) and alignment with other licenses/terms (given that
interoperability is a top level goal of the 4.0 process) are important
to keep in mind for every proposed change.

Mike