Why the GPL-incompatibility?

Hi,

I have a simple question.  Why are all the Creative Commons
licenses incompatible with the GPL?

-- 
Daniel Brockman <danielbrockman.se>

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(1) CC licenses don't extend to software. For software, we
recommend  
the GPL.
(2) Any copyleft license itself determines what other
licenses it is  
compatible with. We're in the process of extending
compatibility with  
our copyleft licenses. But
the FSF controls what licenses are compatible with the GPL.
On Feb 10, 2007, at 12:30 AM, Daniel Brockman wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a simple question.  Why are all the Creative
Commons
> licenses incompatible with the GPL?
>
> -- 
> Daniel Brockman <danielbrockman.se>
>
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-communitylists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community




-----
Lawrence Lessig
CEO
Creative Commons
543 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105-3013

650.736.0999 (vx)
650.723.8440 (fx)
<http://creativecommons
.org>



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On Saturday 10 February 2007 03:30 am, Daniel Brockman
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a simple question.  Why are all the Creative
Commons
> licenses incompatible with the GPL?

Actually, wouldn't CC BY be compatible? (Just off the top of
my head, haven't 
thought about it too much. Though perhaps not becuase of the
attribution 
requirement. It may be that that is like the original BSD
where it comes to 
the GPL.)

BY-SA would be nice, but as much as I like copyleft, one
serious weakness is 
incompatibility with other copyleft licenses wihtout special
work.

Obviously anything with NC is not compatible with any Free
or Open Source 
license in the sense that even if you could use them
together, the result 
could never be a Free or Open Source program. - You have to
allow commercial 
activities to be Free or Open Source.

Obviously anything with ND is not compatible with any Free
or Open Source 
license in the sense that even if you could use them
together, the result 
could never be a Free or Open Source program. (Except
perhaps straight BY-ND 
being used as a resource seperate from the program but
supplied with it.) You 
have to allow derivatives to be Free or Open Source.

That covers all the current biggies right? Does sampling
etc. even exist in 
the recent versoins? I went looking the other day and could
not find anything 
past 1.0 - it is not that I wanted it myself, but IIRC, I
saw some new 
project that had settled on dual licensing with Sampling or
Sampling Plus as 
one of the licenses in conjunction with some NC variant for
the other. It may 
have been A Swarm of Angels. I think it came up over on
openbusiness.cc

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
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> Why are all the Creative Commons
> licenses incompatible with the GPL?

(broad brushstrokes follow.
Nit-pickers need not apply)

If you're talking about converting
content between the CC-SA and GNU-GPL
licenses, then the problem is basically
a side effect of copyleft.

Copyleft licenses keep the content Free
by demanding that the content and any
derivatives are always available under
the same license as the original.

This prevents someone from putting more
restrictions on the work and taking a
version of Free content private.

Almost counter intuitively, copyleft
protects the content by disallowing
someone from removing restrictions on
the work. This could be abused by allowing
someone to first convert the content from
a copyleft license to a public domain license,
and then allowing the person to create
proprietary forks.

So, copyleft keeps the work Free by demanding
that the content and its derivatives must always
be held under the same license as the original.

Which means that if you have two copyleft
licenses, but they have different requirements,
they are incompatible. The GNU-GPL and CC-SA
licenses are both copyleft. But the GNU-GPL has
a source code requirement that the CC-SA does not.

If you took CC-SA content and converted it to
GNU-GPL, you would be adding a source code
requirement to the content that did not exist
before. And if you took GNU-GPL content and
converted it to CC-SA, you'd be removing the
source code requirement.

And since both say you can't change the requirements,
converting between either license is disallowed.

The idea CC is apparently working on for making
licenses inter-operable is to put language into
the license that allows the content to be licensed
under the original license, or any license that is
deemed to be similar enough, for some fuzzy definition
of "enough".

They already have something like this that makes sure
that, for example, the different language versions
of CC-SA are compatible with each other. The way I
understand it, they're are going to try to use the
same approach to expand compatibility outside of the
CC-SA licenses.

Since no CC license has a "source code"
requirement,
I don't think any CC license will ever be directly
interchangable with GNU-GPL. But they are trying to
solve the problem of license proliferation by building
in a mechanism that will allow all the content to be
transferred to licenses that are deemed "close
enough".

I hope this helps.
Greg bond

Bounty Hunters:
Metaphors for Fair Intellectual Property Laws
http://www.greg
bond.com/bountyhunters

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Hi Greg,

>> Why are all the Creative Commons licenses
incompatible
>> with the GPL?
>
> (broad brushstrokes follow.  Nit-pickers need not
apply)
>
> If you're talking about converting content between the
> CC-SA and GNU-GPL licenses, then the problem is
basically
> a side effect of copyleft.

[...]

Thank you very much for the good and clear explanation of
why copyleft licenses are unlikely to be compatible.

The license I am most interested in, however, is CC-BY.

> Since no CC license has a "source code"
requirement,
> I don't think any CC license will ever be directly
> interchangable with GNU-GPL.

Let me ask this:  How come the BSD license (among others)
manages to be compatible with the GPL, but CC-BY fails?

I have tried to understand the text of CC-BY, but it keeps
giving me headaches.

This part, for example, seems to say that it is copyleft:

   4. Restrictions.  The license granted in Section 3 above
   is expressly made subject to and limited by the
following
   restrictions:
   
      1. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly
      perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work only
      under the terms of this License, and You must include
      a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for,
      this License with every copy or phonorecord of the
      Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly
      perform, or publicly digitally perform.  You may not
      offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or
      restrict the terms of this License or the recipients'
      exercise of the rights granted hereunder.

I am such a legalese-illiterate.

> I hope this helps.

It does.  Thank you.

-- 
Daniel Brockman <danielbrockman.se>

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Lawrence Lessig writes:

> (1) CC licenses don't extend to software.  For
software,
> we recommend the GPL.

On the other hand, a lot of people are using the GPL for
non-software works --- such as images.

You cannot combine a CC-BY-licensed image with GPL-licensed
image and get a GPL-licensed result.

I believe that many people who release things under the
terms of CC-BY do not realize this limitation.

> But the FSF controls what licenses are compatible with
> the GPL.

In rough terms, what changes would the FSF have to make in
order for CC-BY to be compatible with the GPL?

-- 
Daniel Brockman <danielbrockman.se>

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On Saturday 10 February 2007 09:56 am, Daniel Brockman
wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> >> Why are all the Creative Commons licenses
incompatible
> >> with the GPL?
> >
> > (broad brushstrokes follow.  Nit-pickers need not
apply)
> >
> > If you're talking about converting content between
the
> > CC-SA and GNU-GPL licenses, then the problem is
basically
> > a side effect of copyleft.
>
> [...]
>
> Thank you very much for the good and clear explanation
of
> why copyleft licenses are unlikely to be compatible.
>
> The license I am most interested in, however, is
CC-BY.
>
> > Since no CC license has a "source code"
requirement,
> > I don't think any CC license will ever be
directly
> > interchangable with GNU-GPL.
>
> Let me ask this:  How come the BSD license (among
others)
> manages to be compatible with the GPL, but CC-BY
fails?

If it is incompatible, I would think it would be becuase the
attribution 
requirements are functioning along the lines of the
advertising clause inthe 
original BSD licenses. I am sure google will give you lots
of info for these 
search terms.
>
> I have tried to understand the text of CC-BY, but it
keeps
> giving me headaches.
>
> This part, for example, seems to say that it is
copyleft:
>
>    4. Restrictions.  The license granted in Section 3
above
>    is expressly made subject to and limited by the
following
>    restrictions:
>
>       1. You may distribute, publicly display,
publicly
>       perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work
only
>       under the terms of this License, and You must
include
>       a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier
for,
>       this License with every copy or phonorecord of
the
>       Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly
>       perform, or publicly digitally perform.  You may
not
>       offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter
or
>       restrict the terms of this License or the
recipients'
>       exercise of the rights granted hereunder.

This is referring to the work or public performances of the
work and not to 
derivatives of the work. It is for derivatives where you can
change the 
license in keeping with the requirements of the license.
>
> I am such a legalese-illiterate.
>
> > I hope this helps.
>
> It does.  Thank you.

I hope this helps as well. It is a guess, but if it is
wrong, it may prompt 
corrections.

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
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Greg bond wrote:
> The idea CC is apparently working on for making
> licenses inter-operable is to put language into
> the license that allows the content to be licensed
> under the original license, or any license that is
> deemed to be similar enough, for some fuzzy definition
> of "enough".

A possible solution would be to allow distribution
and modification under particular versions of particular
licenses. This is the course taken by the European Union
Public License or EUPL [1], which has an article that
basically says "all of this and you can relicense
under
the GPL too".

> Since no CC license has a "source code"
requirement,
> I don't think any CC license will ever be directly
> interchangable with GNU-GPL. But they are trying to

They don't have to be interchangeable as nobody relly
needs GPL programs to be relicensed under CC by-sa.

It would be handy, though, if CC-licensed sounds and
images could be distributed with a GPLd program under
the same GPL license. This would  help the legal distrib-
ution  by free distros of some apps (particularly games).
Debian,  in particular, does not deem any CC license
to be free, even the most permissive by and by-sa flavours.

As Creative Commons already -recommends the GPL for works
made of code, an automatic one-way compatibility (CC-by or
CC-by-sa automatically converting to GPL by inclusion in
a GPL'd program) would be very useful.

- Javier Candeira
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> The license I am most interested in, however, is
CC-BY.

I'm not sure why CC-BY is incompatible with GNU-GPL.

If I had to guess, it's probably because CC-BY attribution
must be made in a way "appropriate to the
medium".
In cc-by works, the attribution must "ripple up"
to the
top. all attribution must end up in the credits to the
movie at the end of the movie.

GNU-GPL doesn't have that strong of an attribution
requirement.
Copyright notices must be kept in place, and I think that's
about it. In a software project, with a "source
code" requirement,
this is fine because the copyright notices are usually in
the
source code, and maintains a history of who has contributed
to that particular file.

But if you made a GNU-GPL movie, with GNU-GPL audio,
stills,
and other content, I don't think GNU-GPL requires that
attribution
for all contributers be rippled up so that it appears at the
end
of the movie.

The BSD license doesn't have an attribution requirement
like CC-BY, so it can be rolled into a GNU-GPL work if
you wanted to.

Anyway, I think that's the issue. Or at least one issue.
Greg

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