License Versions
This page identifies some of the improvements to the Creative Commons license suite from the publication of the first licenses in December, 2002, through the current version 3.0, and highlights important similarities among the major license versions released to date.
Contents
- 1 License Blog Posts
- 2 International License Development Processes
- 3 License Suite Version Chart
- 4 Nomenclature (for unported licenses)
- 5 Technical measures by licensees prohibited
- 6 Attribution to author required
- 7 Attribution to others contemplated
- 8 Requests for removal of attribution contemplated
- 9 Collecting societies regimes addressed
- 10 Representations and warranties by licensor included
- 11 "No endorsement" clause included
- 12 Moral rights clause included
- 13 Adaptations (if allowed) must be marked as such
- 14 Definition of "NonCommercial" unchanged (same in all versions)
- 15 Use of licenses for copyrightable compilations of data anticipated
- 16 Compatible licenses may be used for adaptations of works originally offered under CC ShareAlike licenses
- 17 Sui generis rights in data addressed
License Blog Posts
The chart below presents the major license versions, their launch dates, and blog posts calling for public comment, announcing the launch of a license suite, and explaining changes to new licenses. It also includes posts referencing unfinished version 3.x (3.01, 3.5) licenses, which are not in active discussion and may or may not ever be published. Version 3.0 is most up to date Creative Commons license suite, but the 3.x license discussions address further potential upgrades and changes that may be folded into a new version 4.0 license. The License Errata page, to which you should feel free to contribute, catalogs minor bugs in the licenses like typographical errors.
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International License Development Processes
Released 2004-05-25. Changes explained at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216
License Suite Version Chart
Released 2005-06. Changes described at: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5447 and http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5457
Nomenclature (for unported licenses)
Released 2007-02-23. Version 3 explains the changes.
Technical measures by licensees prohibited
Version 3.01 was discussed 2007-10, work will be folded into a future version, possibly a version 3.5, proposed 2007-12, possibly a version 4.0 over a longer time period (3.01 and 3.5 are not now in active discussion and there may never be CC licenses with those version numbers).
