[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Robert Rohde]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 2:15 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/3 Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com>:
>> Given the significance of sites like Wikipedia to the free content
>> movement, I would not be surprised to see the next generation of CC
>> licenses make explicit provisions for massive multi-author
>> collaborative works.
>
> Spend much time dealing with license incompatibility issues and
> problems caused by special case clauses and you will soon discover why
> that suggestion is a really bad idea.

What I mean is options for attribution schemes and similar provisions
that deal in a practical manner with CC documents published
iteratively with a large number of authors.  For example, a license
might include a provision: "For works published in multiple iterations
and having more than 10 authors, one may choose to list only the 10
most recent authors and add the proviso 'plus X others' where 'X'
specifies the number of additional authors whose names are omitted".
This language is obviously oversimplified, but the point is that the
license can usefully add clauses dealing with works with many authors,
or works that have a history of being published under many different
versions.  As long as those clauses are optional and available on all
derivatives, I would expect such clauses to solve more problems than
they create.

-Robert Rohde