Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Kat Walsh <kat AT creativecommons.org>]

Greetings all--

As you have already seen, one piece of the 4.0 revision process has
been discussion with other license stewards about compatibility with
other licenses, as one of the goals of 4.0 has been to increase
interoperability.

The two main license stewards we've contacted have been the FSF, for
potential one-way compatibility between CC BY and BY-SA and the GNU
GPL, and the Free Art License community, for potential two-way
compatibility between BY-SA and  the FAL.

There are a few issues that are remaining open until the resolution of
these conversations.

One is the possibility of introducing a cure period for licensees not
complying with the license to fix errors before their rights
automatically terminate, in order to better align with the
requirements of GPLv3. However, doing so may break compatibility with
the FAL. We will open this issue for comment as part of the d3
discussions.

The FAL raises another set of issues--because we are looking at two-way
compatibility, we need to be sure that all of the key elements work in
both directions without violating licensors' expectations. Several
pieces still require more discussion to determine whether or not they
are interoperable, and a few may require revisions to the license on
issues aside from those already planned to be part of the d3
discussion. We are seeking additional clarification from the FAL
license steward on areas that may be problematic.

We are also paying attention to how the open issues in the d3
discussions may affect compatibility. One of the issues where we are
still seeking general feedback from affiliates and others for d3 is
how best to address database rights and copyright-like rights in
various jurisdictions.

We are also continuing to make revisions that
will make 4.0 more internationally usable. When we look at these
issues, we will keeping in mind the goal of compatibility with other
licenses.

(Also, I've posted here in the past, but I think this is my first post
to this list as an official part of CC's legal team: I'm looking
forward to continuing the work on 4.0.)

Cheers,
Kat Walsh