Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Francesco Poli <invernomuto AT paranoici.org>]

On Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:16:58 +0200 Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:

> Am Sonntag, 8. April 2012, 11:20:41 schrieb antoine moreau:
> > "When I approached the FSF about my experiments, at first they were
> > completely opposed to it. Richard Stallman told me that there was no
> > reason anyone should copyleft non-software works. He felt that way even
> > about software documentation! This was really the reaction from the
> > entire « free software » 
> 
> That’s quite some time ago, and I think they mostly realized now, that the 
> freedoms they defined for software are something people crave for all parts 
> of 
> their lives. They accept now that their freedoms have a huge appeal outside 
> the limits of software, too.

I am not as optimist as you regarding the current point of view of the
FSF.
I still see the FSF making lots of contorted distinctions among
categories of works, when it comes to defining freedom standards and
recommended licenses, *unfortunately*.

But anyway...

[...] 
> I’ve been using the GPL for my own website and a roleplaying system

I really appreciate that.

[...]
> and Battle for Wesnoth has been 
> publishing everything under GPL since 2003, from program code over artwork 
> and 
> music to storylines, campaigns and user-content - and it’s a huge success.
> 
> So this works very well, when it is done by a project which cares about 
> source 
> code. The only problem I see is with artists, who just want to release 
> stuff, 
> because in the case of wesnoth as well as for my own releases this is 
> backed 
> by version tracking systems which make source releasing trivial. And the 
> project defines the preferred form of modification very clearly as “what 
> other 
> contributors will use” - which naturally is the form of work the project 
> got 
> from the artist.

Actually, I disagree that this is equivalent to the definition of
source found in the GPL.
I am convinced that you have to consider which form the *last* person
who made (manual and non-trivial) modifications to work would prefer to
use, in order to make *further* modifications to the work itself.
I think this is the actual source.

I don't think you can simply get away with "what other contributors
will use", since that is necessarily what other contributors were given
by the author of the work.

For instance, let's say an artist creates an image by using Inkscape,
and saves in SVG format, with the intention of using that vector-based
form for making further modifications, but only releases an exported PNG
file to the project.
In this case the actual source is the SVG file, but other contributors
are only given the exported PNG file, and hence "will use" that form.
We can *survive* with a PNG file to be modified, but that's not the
preferred form in this case. Hence, in the case under consideration, we
are talking about a secret-source image, which should be considered
legally undistributable, if licensed under the GPL.

There's a thread on debian-legal currently going on just about Battle
of Wesnoth:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/04/msg00037.html


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