Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com>]

On 05/01/2014 05:59 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Nicolas Suzor <nic AT suzor.net> wrote:
>> Is there some way to evaluate the size of the compatibility problem at
>> the moment? It strikes me that the answers to many of the specific
>> questions depend significantly on the urgency of addressing the problem.
>>
>> Now that Wikipedia has successfully transitioned, do we have any data
>> about how much demand there is for compatibility? Can we tell, for
>> example, whether there are many users who want to release a single
>> derivative work combining GPL/CC BY-SA code and assets, as opposed to
>> using separate licences to different files within a package?

I don't think expressed demand is a good metric: by the time it gets to
that point, lots of pain has been experienced, including the pain of
learning about license compatibility (and probably remaining confused).
Expressed demand is a sign that license stewards haven't been doing a
good job; they should seek to do a good job so as to avoid such signs.

> That's a good question. In part the answer is no, we don't really have
> a way to evaluate it. It's been a request we've seen from multiple
> sources in multiple communities, but without good information on how
> large the scope of the problem is. (We have a few use cases outlined
> on the wiki, as mentioned by Isaac downthread, but it's not a complete
> list, or an estimate of the scope.)

I just added another to
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/GPL_compatibility_use_cases#GPL_and_CC-BY-SA_each_used_frequently_for_hardware_design
-- According to
http://www.oshwa.org/oshw-community-survey-2013/#section5 of those
surveyed 37.5% have released designs under CC-BY-SA and 28% under GPL.
Compatibility would allow combinations across those two pools.

Mike