Why the Free Art License
or
An attempt to explain some criterias for free content licenses
"Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated."
(from the Zen of Python, by Tim Peters)
This is a work in progress, in other words some rough notations to enter into a study concerning the possibility of estalishing some compatibilities between several non-software free content licenses.
The main points
By the old saying, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails".
Indeed, the difference in terms and in writing between the main copyleft licenses originate, not in mere stylistic habits that might easily be levelled by careful new terms in future versions of those licenses, but in different visions of freedom which deserve publically documented design decisions. Reciprocal compatibility between any licenses will never be achieved without an agreement on what constitutes freedom for creative works, and how it should influence the writing of a free copyleft license.
Why non-software works should be free as well
The Free Art License has been heavily influenced by the observation of free software communities and the legal conventions that help them share software gracefully (especially the GNU GPL, which is arguably the most important free software license). It is not, however, the product of a naive desire to mimick free software collaboration in the art world. As artists, the originators of the Free Art License (Antoine Moreau and Isabelle Vodjdani) fully recognize that creative processes in art are different than in software.
To put it shortly, software is a world of continuous collaborative refinement mostly integrated to the same whole work; art, however, is a world of repetitive forking of previous works or ideas by rather isolated individuals (of course, collaborative works of art do exist; but their possibility does not constitute the essential of sharing in the art world). But it also appeared quickly that these differences did not render the free software lessons uninteresting for art. On the contrary, the fundamental freedoms and the legal artifacts of free software could provide a very direct model for the drafting of a general license applicable to works of art (and, more generally, all creations of the human mind and craft).
Creative works should be free for the same reason that software should be free: to be gracefully reused, modified, distributed. Even if creative processes are different, there is no essential difference between art and software that justifies a restriction in essential freedoms. For example, the distinction between supposedly "functional" and "non-functional" works is fallacious; a creative work can be qualified as "functional" or "non-functional" in a specific meaning and according to its various contexts of interpretation (insert reference to Nelson Goodman). It is not a characteristic property of the work itself. And, precisely, since we are talking about freedom in works of art, we want "non-functional" works to be re-usable in order to operate in the creative process that goes beyond the individual end of self-expression, while respecting the moral integrity of every original author (by whole aknowlegment to the original work i-e attribution and access to the original work). We therefore need unified freedoms for the whole range of creative works. The freedom of a work of art, as well as the freedom of a piece of software, entails the freedom to overcome the sole consumption of it's aesthetical impact by stimulating some new creative process.
Analog (or partly analog) works and the FAL
One should first note that, although we will focus on the distinction between analog and digital works, another important distinction gracefully handled by the FAL is between autographic and allographic works as defined by Nelson Goodman.
One of the beauties of the FAL is that, thanks to its simple and careful wording, it applies gracefully to analog works as well as digital works of art - without any additional verbosity or specific terms.
Digital works and the FAL
The dangers of complication
This is how Miod Vallat,
OpenBSD? hacker, commented on the Apache license 2.0 after Theo de Raadt,
OpenBSD? benevolent dictator, announced that software put under that license would be refused in the project:
"I personnally consider that a license which I can't understand without help, because I'm neither a lawyer nor a person with a strong legal knowledge, is significantly less free than a license everyone with a brain can understand..."
(
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/misc/0402/msg01152.html)
One must notice that most free licenses were not solely written by lawyers. The Free Art License has been co-written by artists and lawyers. The GNU GPL has been co-written by a hacker and a lawyer. Many free licenses were written or co-written by the people who need them in the first place. This often makes them simple, or even crystal clear.
This shows that, while dangerous, legal complication is not inevitable. Licenses like the Free Art License can be at the same time ethically ambitious, legally unambiguous, and understandable by anyone. Three essential qualities that noone should accept to give up.