Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Fri, 4 May 2012 18:50:51 +0200, Francesco Poli
<invernomuto AT paranoici.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 02 May 2012 13:58:09 +0200 Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> 
> [...] 
>> drew Roberts wrote:
> [...]
>> > If the only way my BY-SA photos get on the same CD with someone else's
>> > ARR photos and still another ARR text is by some computer program
>> > randomly picking stuff off of a large hard disk so as to try and
>> > minimize wasted space on the CD, fine. Mere aggregation. CD itself does
>> > not get a copyright / is not a work of copyright. If instead my photo
>> > ends up on that CD because someone picked it as being a supporting part
>> > or a representative part of that CD such that some creativity was used
>> > in selecting what went on that CD and that CD is a work deserving of a
>> > copyright of its own, I say that is not mere aggregation going on wrt
>> > that CD and let the copyleft provisions kick in such that all works of
>> > copyright contained on that CD must have a Free license.
>>
>> I agree. That is what I expect from the GPL.
> [...]
>>
>> People who get a Debian CD want to get specific functionality. When
>> they do not have akregator as newsreader but RSS Owl, and they do not
>> know akregator, they might not even notice that.
> 
> Wait, are you claiming that a Debian CD (or DVD) is not an
> "aggregate" (as defined in the GNU GPL v3)?

No, it is an aggregate and that is why I say that the gplv3 is not a
good enough license to do what is needed for photos and such. It is why
I want the next BY-SA to do more than that. It is why I do not want the
next BY-SA to allow for one way conversion / compatibility to gplv2 (or
v2). Even though I do how that in the long run we will have such
compatibility between BY-SA and GPL works. My code is licensed GPL (I
keep meaning to experiment with AGPL some) and so I have a personal as
well as theoretical reason for wanting this.

> That would mean that no GPLv3-incompatible work could legally be
> included in the CD, since there are GPLv3-licensed works in the CD!
> Are you claiming that a Debian CD is not covered by the "mere
> aggregation" exception found in the GNU GPL v2?

If it is, and no one seems to dispute this, this just proves to me that
the FSF folks made a mistake in choosing the word 'mere' to describe
such an aggregate. It is in fact a creative aggregate if it gets a
copyright. (Please note, we have no dispute with those 'aggregates' not
getting copyright protection.)

> That would mean that no GPLv2-incompatible work could legally be
> included in the CD, since there are GPLv2(only)-licensed works in the
> CD!
> Since GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible with each other, that would mean
> that, even after kicking out all GPL-incompatible works, even either
> GPLv2(only)-licensed or GPLv3-licensed work would have to be dropped!
> 
> I think that a Debian CD satisfies the "aggregate" or "mere
> aggregation" exception, despite being a creative selection of packages
> (certainly not randomly picked off by a computer program!).

And that is precisely the problem if correct. The licenses are designed
for programs/code and do a fine job there. The FSF is unconcerned with
the sorts of works I am concerned with for this desire to make BY-SA
stronger in this round. It is no surprise that the GPL does not do the
job. I don't expect it to get better until the FSF gets interested in
things other than code.

all the best,

drew