Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf AT gwolf.org>]

Francesco Poli dijo [Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 04:16:04PM +0100]:
> [...]
> > > In my own personal opinion, the most important feature that really has
> > > to be implemented into CC-v4.0 licenses is GPL-compatibility.
> [...]
> > > Hence, I think that:
> > >
> > >   * CC-by-sa-v4.0 should include an explicit one-way conversion clause
> > > that would allow redistribution of the work under the terms of the GNU
> > > GPL version 2 or any later version
> > 
> > This is no viable. It wouldcertainly cause me to seriously consider not 
> > using 
> > cc licenses at all.
> 
> I am sorry to read that, especially taking into account that one of the
> main reasons why I still do not accept CC licenses is that they are
> GPL-incompatible.

AFAICT, no (general use) license allows you to relicense its content
into some other one. Authors wanting to grant you such a right usually
double-license their works. What we need to ensure is that CC4 and GPL
projects can be used together/bundled/linked.

I use GPL for (most of) the code I write, and used CC-BY for my book
:) There is place for both fundamentalisms in this world, specially
given we are on the same side!

Please note (and I know you told me this in a different mail, but this
is for the rest of the list) that the fact that CC is GPL-incompatible
is somewhat controversial - Some people (me included) think it is.

> > One of my main goals for BY-SA in the 4.0+ world is stronger copyleft 
> > protection for all works. It would be highly counterproductive to then 
> > allow 
> > the conversion of works so protected to a license that did not have those 
> > protections.
> 
> CC-by-sa is a weaker copyleft than the GNU GPL in many respects.
> For instance, it does not require making source available.
> Hence, from my point of view, it's the other way around: a conversion
> from CC-by-sa to GPL would strengthen the copyleft mechanism!

Even though you can choose to GPL-license whatever material you have,
as you said yourself, GPL is meant for code due to many peculiarities
that code has that many other expressions don't. Being the materials
of different nature, applying a strict GPL can be impossible - Just
the "source available" requirement can bring more than a couple of
headaches.

It's very difficult (and futile, I'd say) to argue if CC-BY-SA or GPL
have the strongest copyleft mechanisms. They are meant for different
purposes. But yes, I'll try to keep arguing to keep them legally
combinable.