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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Compatibility open issue #3: one-way compatibility

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  • From: Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab AT web.de>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Compatibility open issue #3: one-way compatibility
  • Date: Wed, 07 May 2014 10:19:53 +0200

Am Montag, 5. Mai 2014, 06:53:04 schrieb Anthony:
> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 1:32 AM, Richard Fontana <rfontana AT redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 12:42:12AM -0400, Anthony wrote:
> > > One-way compatibility is a great way to kill a license. Anyone can fork
> > a work
> > > and license the fork under the new license. This forces the original
> > project to
> > > either switch to the new license, or to not incorporate the changes.
> >
> > Any real-world case where this has happened?
> >
>
> FDL with respect to the works to which the compatibility applied would be
> the most prominent one.

This was an intentional move by one big project in concert with the license
creators: Both intended to deprecate the FDL for Wikipedia, because cc by-sa
gave big advantages to the project. Both is clearly not the case here: Since
there are reasons why the new license cannot be two-way compatible, it almost
certainly will have higher requirements of licensors and licensees.

Talking about the GPL here: For artwork the GPL is pretty inconvenient (I
publish huge gimp-files on a static FTP outside our main versiontracking
system), so I do not see any reason for artists to switch. And the ones who
actually need the GPL for real copyleft (programmers) won’t be the ones who
work a lot on the art (or in the case of wesnoth: do work which gives them a
copyright: The programmers mostly minified the images with scripts, which is
not enough to give them a copyright on that). If the source-requirement were
not inconvenient for art, then it would most likely be part of cc by-sa.

I can see a few fringe-cases where someone would actually want to try to use
this to hurt a project, but keeping the gaping chasm in our two commons to
avoid a few fringe cases looks unreasonable for me - and as I wrote, there
are much easier ways to hurt a project than to say “I have some contributions
here, but you cannot use them”.

As a counter-example: I saw quite a few GPL-forks of BSD-software over the
years. All of these forks died. The only instances where I saw a switch to a
stronger copyleft succeed where when the project as a whole decided to switch
- or when there was copyright assignment (the GNU packages) in which case
compatibility does not matter in the first place.

I remember these, because I once was a proponent of using the GPL for all
contributions, even to projects under other licenses. Experience showed me,
that you can never change the project license without consent of the main
contributors. Otherwise you just get yourself into merging-conflict-hell.

> The only other license which comes to mind as one which allows one-way
> compatibility is the Lesser GPL, and the use of that one is specifically
> discouraged by its creators.

The use of the Lesser GPL is not discouraged. It is encouraged in cases where
it is useful: To compete against an established proprietary library when most
uses of that library are proprietary software.

Another license which allows one-way compatibility is the GPL itself: It
allows one-way compatibility to the AGPL, which is needed for actual copyleft
in webservices.

And there are two more licenses which allows one-way compatibility: cc by and
cc by-nc.

What you see in GPL is LGPL->GPL->AGPL (depending on the requirements of the
project).

What you see in cc is by->{by-nc,by-sa,by-nc-sa} and by-nc->by-nc-sa.

As one-way graph:


by --> by-nc -> by-nc-sa
|
+-> by-sa
|
+-> LGPL --> GPL --> AGPL


One-way-compatibility of by-sa would change this by adding a convergence-path
for copyleft works with source-code requirements:


by --> by-nc -> by-nc-sa
|
+-> by-sa \
| --> GPL --> AGPL
+-> LGPL /


And just like there are reasons why people do not add nc-clauses for their
works, there are reasons why people do not add source-requirement: For many
types of works, that is a huge hassle for little benefit. For the types of
works which need source-requirement to get copyleft in the real world, this
hassle cannot be avoided, but for the others, it would be great if we could
avoid the hassle.

As it stands right now, the decision is “will I want to combine this with
sourcecode or text intended for a PDF at some point in the future? If yes, I
*must* use the GPL or cc by”. Since I also write prose and programs, my
answer is “definitely yes!”.

So the current licensing ecosystem *forces me* to either forfeit copyleft or
use the GPL for all types of works, even for the ones for which it is not
suited well.

One-way compatibility from cc by-sa to GPL or AGPL would change this: I could
simply put all new art and music I create under cc by-sa and still use it in
concert with my GPL-licensed Scribus design-files and the existing art from
Wesnoth and others.


Best wishes,
Arne
--
1w6 sie zu achten,
sie alle zu finden,
in Spiele zu leiten
und sacht zu verbinden.
http://1w6.org






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