Development of Creative Commons licenses

[sebastian nielsen <nielsen.sebastian AT gmail.com>]

Current today, the license compatibility is as this:

A work that is X can contain material licensed under Y as following:

BY -> BY
BY-NC -> BY BY-NC
BY-NC-ND -> BY BY-NC
BY-NC-SA -> BY BY-NC BY-NC-SA
BY-ND -> BY
BY-SA -> BY BY-SA

The problem is that there is no universal license.
You cannot for example combine a work that is BY-SA and BY-NC-SA into
a third work, since releasing it under BY-SA would violate the
BY-NC-SA license, and releasing it under BY-NC-SA would violate the
BY-SA license.

The point of the SA license is to prevent a creator from releasing his
derative works for example under public domain or under a "copyright
reserved" non-CC license, so new creators can adapt on the derivate
works.

I think we should not restrict SA 4.0 to be used in derative works as
long as the final license is CC compatible and does contain at *LEAST*
the wording in the original licensing, instead of requiring a exact
match as the 3.0 does today.


So my suggestion is, that a work under BY-SA should be able to release
its derivates under either BY-NC-SA or BY-SA, or anything compatible.
Not any other license.
My think behind this, is if we take a example:

One author has done a picture with this license:
BY-SA

Another author has done another picture with this license:
BY-NC-SA

If I then morph togheter those images, and then release them under
BY-NC-SA, it wouldn't hurt any of the authors, since the first author
can see the derative work being released as CC *-SA compatible license
that allows derivation, and the second author can see the same thing.
And since the derative cannot be commercially used, the second author
would not be hurt by seeing a derative of his work being used for
money.

So in my point of view, I think the licenses should be changed into
permitting mixing BY-NC-SA with BY-SA.

So the changed compatibility would be:
A work that is X can contain material licensed under Y as following:
BY -> BY
BY-NC -> BY BY-NC
BY-NC-ND -> BY BY-NC
BY-NC-SA -> BY BY-NC BY-NC-SA BY-SA
BY-ND -> BY
BY-SA -> BY BY-SA


that would then make BY-NC-SA a universal license that works for all
derivate works that is picked from any CC-license that does not
contain ND.


The change in the commons deed for BY-SA 4.0 would be:
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you
may distribute the resulting work only under a CC-compatible license
which does include at least the license elements that this work has.


and the change in legal code Restrictions 4b BY-SA 4.0 would be:

b.You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the
terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with
at least the License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative
Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version)
that contains at least the License Elements as this License (e.g.,
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 US or Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
4.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License that contains at
least the License Elements used in this license. If you license the
Adaptation under one of the licenses mentioned in (iv), you must
comply with the terms of that license. If you license the Adaptation
under the terms of any of the licenses mentioned in (i), (ii) or (iii)
(the "Applicable License"), you must comply with the terms of the
Applicable License generally and the following provisions: (I) You
must include a copy of, or the URI for, the Applicable License with
every copy of each Adaptation You Distribute or Publicly Perform; (II)
You may not offer or impose any terms on the Adaptation that restrict
the terms of the Applicable License or the ability of the recipient of
the Adaptation to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under
the terms of the Applicable License; (III) You must keep intact all
notices that refer to the Applicable License and to the disclaimer of
warranties with every copy of the Work as included in the Adaptation
You Distribute or Publicly Perform; (IV) when You Distribute or
Publicly Perform the Adaptation, You may not impose any effective
technological measures on the Adaptation that restrict the ability of
a recipient of the Adaptation from You to exercise the rights granted
to that recipient under the terms of the Applicable License. This
Section 4(b) applies to the Adaptation as incorporated in a
Collection, but this does not require the Collection apart from the
Adaptation itself to be made subject to the terms of the Applicable
License.