On 10/26/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I find the CC licenses to be very explicit and very clear about what constitutes a "collective" work (their equivalent of the GDFL's "aggregate" section) and full of copius examples of what sorts of things would be considered to be that. The GDFL's "aggregate" section doesn't really indicate whether they mean that a final printed page with mixed-licensing materials would be considered an "aggregate" or not, or give any indication of what the real boundary is between "aggregate" and "derivative," in my reading of it. I'd consider that a rather big difference, personally -- clarity can go a long way.
The CC licenses 'solves' the legally unclear boundary of derivative works by claiming that anything which includes the work which doesn't meet their criteria of collective works is derivative:
"or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License."
I'm not so sure that doing so is wise: The boundaries of a derivative work are created by law, not the copyright holder. So while we can pretend to declare what a derivative work actually is, should our definition disagree with the law we will lose that argument every time.
Their definition of a collective work is similar to the GFDLs:
Compare
"in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole."
with
"A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works"
Notice the words 'separate and independent' ? This is the key criteria used define collective/aggregate works in both the licenses.
It's true that the CC licenses include examples, but the examples are potentially misleading. For example, if you were to publish a "periodical issue, anthology or encyclopedia" in which the covered work has been combined with another other work, the result would be considered derivative because the covered and non-covered components are not 'separate and independent'.
This is, in part, a stylistic difference between CC licenses and some other licenses. The CC licenses are written in a way which combines non-binding narrative in the body of the license proper while most other licenses provide such content in separate documents or as part of a preface. The inclusion of such materials makes the license appear more friendly, but it could be argued that doing so may result in misunderstanding.
The aggregate works section of the GFDL v2 draft is unchanged from the GFDL v1.2 and after carefully examining the language of CC-By-SA licenses it seems apparent to me that they are almost functionally equal. As a result I wouldn't recommend a change to this section of GFDL v2.