Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org>]

We have received at least one inquiry off-list about what we meant by the term "one-way compatibility" so I thought I would clarify on the mailing list for everyone. One-way compatibility from BY-SA to GPLv3 would mean that people would be able to take BY-SA works, adapt them, and apply the GPLv3. They would not, however, be able to take GPLv3 projects, adapt them, and apply BY-SA. In other words, you could move from BY-SA to GPLv3, but not the other way around.

Hope that clears up any confusion. It's a tricky concept.

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 3:13 PM, Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org> wrote:

Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation are pleased to formally propose the GNU General Public License v.3 as the next candidate for consideration under the ShareAlike compatibility process. Note that we are pursuing one-way compatibility only, meaning BY-SA works could be adapted and GPLv3 applied, but not vice-versa.

This proposal is rooted in the growing (albeit niche) need for a solution to the melding of content and code in certain domains, such as gaming. Developers sometimes abstain from integrating BY-SA content into GPL-licensed software projects because of uncertainty about how the two copyleft licenses interact, and there is reluctance to use BY-SA for code due to CC’s explicit discouragement from doing so. This obstacle to reuse and remix of BY-SA content in projects under a license so similar in substance and spirit is at the heart of the problem the compatibility mechanism in BY-SA was designed to solve.

Nonetheless, there are certainly differences between the two licenses, especially given that one was designed for software and one explicitly was not. We have created a wiki page for the proposal, which includes an initial comparison of the two licenses.

This email marks the opening of the public discussion on this mailing list. We will be sending out specific discussion prompts on major topics in the coming weeks, but we encourage you to provide input at any time on- or off-list.

best,

CC Legal