Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Kim Tucker <kctucker AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Mike as always for your well considered responses. I am not
> sure time will allow me to do equal justice in my responses here or
> elsewhere as you have requested. For now a few comments for this list:

Thank you as well. :)

By the way (to all), regarding this list, earlier today I approved a
couple posts which only concerned specific text in Libre Puro. We're
mostly going to try to only approve emails that directly address 4.0
in some fashion, to keep the traffic manageable (I'll always suggest
another venue such as cc-community; and regarding LP, I promise to
leave some comments specific to it on its wiki which you might want to
check out in 2012 :)).

>> It is highly unlikely we'd add a new license to the suite (or re-add an
>> old one, as you suggested on the wiki).
>
> Unlikely, but I hope not impossible.
>
> ShareAlike 1.0 was a mustard seed which was hardly given a chance to 
> germinate.

Frankly that's what they all say. The few people who liked the
probably most problematic license CC ever released (sampling) say it
wasn't given a chance, would've been huge. I sometimes think that
about GPL art in the late 1990s. Anyway, path dependence is reality,
and we have to take account current usage, which profoundly effects
the optimal path to take now.

> In an ideal world (imo) something like ShareAlike 4.0 should be the
> default license on the Internet: people will find, copy and share
> things (in a certain spirit) irrespective of other licenses.
> Attribution will be done when applicable (e.g. for scientific
> articles). Imposing restrictions must be done consciously.

That'd be a nice world. Tell your legislature.

>> specific issues I'd love to have your contributions to:
>>
>> - BY-SA compatibility with other copyleft licenses.
>>  http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/ShareAlike
>
> In BY-SA: "Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this
> work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or
> similar license to this one."
>
> This wording (on the deed) is fine: attribution and freedoms retained
> in derived works.
>
> Works derived from Libre Puro resources may be distributed under
> CC-BY-SA "or similar license"s [which retain the essential freedoms].
>
>> - Attribution. One doesn't have to require giving credit when releasing
>>  work under a BY* license, but perhaps there's something 4.0
>> could do to make that more clear.
>
> The point is users have to check - a small but significant barrier in
> some sectors of our free culture. Libre Puro and ShareAlike 4.0 free
> up those sections of our culture which do not require attribution
> (e.g. kids making creative mixes to share with their friends, friends
> sharing insights from some source or other, ...).

Users always have to check in any case, for a particular license,
particular options, provenance of the work and license. Given the
critical mass BY-SA has achieved, I really, really think it is best to
focus on using it to enable the scenario you envision.

> A new mustard seed ShareAlike 4.0 (or debugged Libre Puro) could spawn
> new projects which may flourish - or, its existence may inspire its
> use in society (not as part of any specific projects). CC0 - permits
> enclosure (a process which is increasingly being automated!!).

Yes, I'm familiar with the tradeoffs between copyleft and
permissive/public domain. I would absolutely LOVE evidence of
automated enclosure of CC0'd works. That'd be a significant milestone.

In any event, if you really believe that Libre Puro (however named) is
going to be much, much more powerful for the commons than BY-SA, but
can't convince others so as to get such included in the 4.0 process,
I'd suggest moving ahead with debugging and releasing Libre Puro.
Assuming you succeed in really making it compatible with BY-SA, GPL,
etc, it will be a worthy experiment (if not truly compatible as such,
I'd urge you not to release it!). If it shows signs of making an
impact, that would presumably pique interest in the CC 4.0 process,
which is going to take awhile.

Mike