Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab AT web.de>]

Am Freitag, 30. Januar 2015, 14:41:51 schrieb Sarah Pearson:
> 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.

I think it’s worthwhile to add that this is not an entirely new
concept: It is available in many forms where one type of content
benefits from stronger protection for the right to reuse than another
one.

The most well-known example is the transition from CC by for
scientific works (open access) to CC by-sa for cultural works.

For scientific works the authors benefit strongly from attribution but
have little use for sharealike, because small adaptions of the
scientific work are unsuitable for scientific publishing (no journal
would publish them, so they would not help to improve the reputation
of the scientists) and the scientists don’t actually benefit from the
works, but from spreading the information therein (and who created it
- reputation and citations). Others reuse the ideas, and these cannot
be protected by copyright anyway.

For cultural works however, extensive polishing can make the
difference between serving a niche and reaching the mainstream. As
such cultural works require stronger ensurance for the ability to
reuse derivative works. Sharealike ensures that people are allowed to
reuse any derivative by direct adaption of the work - which isn’t
needed for scientific works; partly because there are already all
kinds of copyright exceptions for science, like the right to cite.

Consequently you can take any open access work (under CC by) and
combine it with works under CC by-sa. The resulting derivative work is
CC by-sa.


For CC by-sa and GPLv3 or later a similar situation exists: Most
artwork under CC by-sa would not benefit from ensuring that the source
stays available, because most times what people change is actually the
propagated work, not the real source (often huge multitrack or
multilayer files), so the cost of requiring the source is higher than
the benefit of having it available for derivative works.


The other existing example is the GPL itself: Clause 13 of the GPLv3
allows using works under GPL with works under AGPL:

    Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have
    permission to link or combine any covered work with a work
    licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License
    into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The
    terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is
    the covered work, but the special requirements of the GNU Affero
    General Public License, section 13, concerning interaction through
    a network will apply to the combination as such.

The AGPL requires providing source code for programs which you control
over the network and which are actually executed on another computer.


So making CC by-sa one-way compatible to the GPL isn’t a first step
into that direction. It follows the same logic which makes scientists
choose CC by and programmers to choose the GPL: use the least
restrictive license which ensures the possibility of effective reuse
in your field - and allow people in fields with stronger copyleft
needs to move towards a license which provides the required
safeguards.


Best wishes,
Arne

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