Difference between revisions of "4.0/Compatibility"

Summary

Treatment in drafts

Overview

How CC thinks about compatibility generally

In general, a license may be compatible with one of the CC licenses when it is possible to comply with both sets of license terms simultaneously. When two licenses are compatible, you may take a work licensed under the first license, remix it and thereby create an adaptation, and apply the compatible license to your remix. The ShareAlike licenses are a special case: because of the copyleft mechanism, only licenses that CC has explicitly named may be compatible. For the BY and BY-NC licenses, compatibility is less constrained, and more complex. More detail and explanation about compatibility for the non-ShareAlike licenses is on the Treatment of Adaptations page.

Explaining compatibility with ShareAlike first requires knowing how adaptations work in general. By definition, an adaptation is a new work based on the pre-existing work and new contributions by the person creating the adaptation. The rights of the adapting remixer does not extend to the pre-existing material.^[1] This is a complexity of copyright law, not the CC licenses themselves. Thus, when an adaptation of a CC-licensed work is created and licensed, the new license only applies to the adapter’s new contributions and not the original content. The original work is licensed to the downstream user directly from the original author. A user of an adaptation licensed under a CC license is receiving and must comply with (at least) two licenses -- one from the creator of the original work, and a second from the adapter (the person creating and licensing the adaptation) for use of the new content and modifications contributed by the adapter.

When you make an adaptation of a ShareAlike work, you must make that adaptation under a compatible license. For ShareAlike, compatibility is allowed through the definition within the license as well as the section on sharing Adaptations. However, CC has not yet named any other licenses as compatible with ShareAlike. This page explores the mechanism and process for doing so, as well as potential candidates for compatibility.

Potential compatible licenses

FAL

In CC's view, FAL 1.3 is a strong candidate for two-way compatibility with BY-SA 4.0. Discussions are currently underway that we hope will allow remixing between two similarly-spirited but currently separate islands of content. We are working through details of what adjustments may need to be made in order to accomplish this goal. We will be vetting those fully with our communities between now and d3. It is possible that some tweaks may needed to be made to our licenses to make that happen, affecting current drafting. In terms of operationalizing such a statement on the CC side either through a reference in the license itself or inclusion on our existing (empty) webpage [link], this is an open question that will be addressed once more progress is made. For now, d2 contains the same compatibility language as 3.0 and maintains the definition of Creative Commons Compatible License and structure.

GPL

CC is also looking at one-way compatibility from BY and BY-SA to the GNU GPL v3.0. While the benefits may not seem immediately apparent to some given that CC is suitable for content and not software, the reality is that increasingly, people are creating works that mix content and code in ways that create uncertainty around how the licenses interact. As software becomes a greater part of artistic creation in the future, we want to be sure that people who want to release these works freely can do so without worrying about potential compatibility problems.

There are a few examples. One is 3D printing, where a creator of a functional design licensed under the GNU GPL may want to incorporate designs and art released under BY-SA. Many designs people are currently creating and remixing are being treated like software--mostly functional, with creativity tying its elements together--and licensed under a software license. But the more people are able to do with these works, the more benefit there will be in making another body of content legally accessible.

Another is interactive games and art, which generate new artistic works by using code to combine existing smaller works. Video games are code, but also art, and some blur the distinction so much that you can’t separate out the elements to treat them as a simple aggregation. Many generate new, original graphics or music based on the underlying code and the player’s actions; where they are built from BY or BY-SA licensed pieces, it may be necessary to ensure that they are compatible.

• GPL Compatibility. CC BY does not make any specific requirements on the exact license an adaptation may be released under, but it ought be possible for a downstream licensee of an adaptation to fulfill CC BY conditions when fulfilling conditions of license adaptation offered under, ie conditions of license adaption under should be a superset of CC BY conditions. CC BY may be slightly misaligned with GPL such that latter's conditions not a strict superset of former. FSF says CC BY is not GPL compatible -- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ccby
  • Items to look at for potential incompatibilities and potential rectification:
    • 4.0/Technical protection measures
    • 4.0/Attribution and marking
  • GPL compatibility is discussed in detail on this page with some additional arguments in compatibility use cases.

Considerations regarding compatibility of other licenses (community commentary on the subject)

• Consider addressing uncertainty regarding releasing a work (adaptation/ derivative) under a CC Compatible license
  • When I thought about CC-BY-SA 3.0 --> GFDL transition as a hypothetical case, it was not necessarily all clear how I would "follow" GFDL after creating a derivative of a CC-BY-SA'd work.
  • To address the uncertainty, consider developing a "exemplary practice guideline" that would serve as a "safe harber" - i.e. the range of practice that is considered to be "in compliance" with both licenses for the transition purposes. Practice outside of the guideline may be okay, or maybe not. Insert some language to make this safe harbor effective in 4.0. After some licenses become compatible, develop such guidelines with steward of the compatible license.

Please add other important considerations to this discussion here.

Proposals relating to compatibility in 4.0

For ease of reference on discussion lists, please do not alter proposal numbers.

Compatibility Proposal No. 1: Clarify definition of Creative Commons Compatible License. (Currently, "Creative Commons Compatible License" means a license that is listed at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses that has been approved by Creative Commons as being essentially equivalent to this License, including, at a minimum, because that license: (i) contains terms that have the same purpose, meaning and effect as the License Elements of this License; and, (ii) explicitly permits the relicensing of adaptations of works made available under that license under this License or a Creative Commons jurisdiction license with the same License Elements as this License."

• Pros:
• Cons: Current language is ambiguous. Does it mean (a) the compatible license must give options for a licensee to pick any of those CC licenses? Or does it mean that (b) the compatible license must give at least one of those CC licenses as an option?
• Other comments: Better wording (though I am not a native speaker) suggestions, for (a) and (b) above, respectively, are:
  • • (ii) explicitly permits the relicensing of adaptations of works made available under that license under any of the Creative Commons licenses with the same License Elements as this License, including this License.
    • (ii) explicitly permits the relicensing of adaptations of works made available under that license under at least one of the Creative Commons licenses with the same License Elements as this License, such as this License, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Australia license, or Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Japan license.
• Treatment in 4.0 d.1: Not addressed in this initial draft; only BY-NC-SA is published for review during this first comment period. Please continue to put forth and comment on proposals for draft #2, which will likely include all six licenses.
• Treatment in 4.0 d.2: Not addressed.
• Treatment in 4.0 d.3: Definition changed as explained in the summary at the top of the page.

Related debate

We encourage you to sign up for the license discussion mailing list, where we will be debating this and other 4.0 proposals. HQ will provide links to related email threads from the license discussion mailing list here.

• Discussion about compatibility between CC and the Free Art License, started by Antoine Pitrou on 12/23/11

Relevant references

Please add citations that ought inform this 4.0 issue below.

• Libre Puro License (draft)
  • Preamble
  • License deed
• Declaration on libre knowledge
• Say Libre
• Libre knowledge
• Compatible License clause

Notes