Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org>]

This discussion prompt about one-way compatibility from BY-SA 4.0 to GPLv3 deals with attribution.

The specific attribution and marking requirements in the two licenses vary slightly.

BY-SA requires:

1. creator and attribution parties (if supplied)

2. copyright notice (if supplied)

3. license notice (if supplied)

4. disclaimer notice (if supplied)

5. URI or link to the licensed material (if supplied)

6. indicate and link to license

If you change the work, BY-SA also requires you to indicate that you did so and retain any notice on the work about previous changes made to it.

GPL requires:

1. copyright notice

2. license notices and notice of Section 7 additional conditions (if supplied)

3. notices about lack of warranty (if supplied)

4. copy of the license

If you change the work, GPL requires you include a prominent notice to indicate that you did so, along with the relevant date. It also requires special notices for certain interactive user interfaces.

When BY-SA content is adapted into a GPL-licensed project, the adapter would, of course, have to comply with the BY-SA attribution and marking requirements. However, Section 2(a)(5)(B) of BY-SA 4.0 would enable downstream reusers of the GPL-licensed project to attribute both authors in the manner required by the GPL.

We suspect GPL-style attribution would satisfy CC licensor expectations, but this is ultimately a question for our community. Are there any concerns about the application of GPL attribution requirements to BY-SA works?

best,

Sarah