Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Kat Walsh <kat AT creativecommons.org>]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Francesco Poli
<invernomuto AT paranoici.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:18:31 +0100 Rob Myers wrote:
>
> > On 01/04/13 16:07, Francesco Poli wrote:
> > >
> > > Anyway, if we want to be really safe, the conversion clause may be
> > > limited to GPL v2 and to GPL v3, thus allowing redistribution under the
> > > terms of the GNU GPL version 2 or version 3.
> >
> > GPLv3+ would be best. v2 is deprecated at this point,
>
> I respectfully disagree: I am convinced that GPLv2 is better than GPLv3
> in many respects, and anyway obtaining GPLv3-compatibility without
> GPLv2-compatibility would only be a half-victory (I think
> GPLv2-compatibility is still important nowadays).
>
> Hence, I reiterate: my original recommendation was an explicit one-way
> conversion clause to GPLv2-or-later, but, if there are concerns about
> future versions of the GNU GPL (such as the ones raised by drew
> Roberts), I recommend a conversion clause to GPLv2-or-v3.


We are not including explicit compatibility clauses in 4.0; instead,
we're sticking with the approach in 3.0 of maintaining a list external
to the license.

You're right about the potential problems this approach presents, and
we're aware of them. The downsides of explicit compatibility are that
the list is settled with the new version, and tied to the versioning
process--more discussions need to happen in parallel, and no new
considerations can be made without publishing a new version (even if
only a minor version).

In particular, with GPL, explicitly naming it as compatible would
require us to declare that one-way compatibility with the ShareAlike
licenses is okay. While we are hopeful about the possibility of making
BY-SA works and GPL works explicitly compatible, we don't think this
is a decision we can make without more clear thought around the
criteria and process for making these compatibility decisions, and
that should be a broader discussion than could happen just within the
CC office. Separating that discussion from the versioning process
means that we can spend attention on it without the competing pressure
to publish 4.0 as soon as possible.

The discussion about the criteria and process for identifying and
naming compatible licenses will be held on this list after 4.0 is
published--our goal is that this will be done in such a way that most
of the potential concerns are addressed or outweighed.

-Kat

--
Kat Walsh, Counsel, Creative Commons
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