Creative Commons has since its launch in 2002 acknowledged free software as an inspiration, but in-depth communication and understanding across the "free culture" (and education, science, government...) and free software movements has been thin, resulting in missed opportunities (at least on the free culture side). Two developments make early 2012 an opportune and necessary time to address this. First, Creative Commons has kicked off a process which will eventually lead to the release of version 4.0 of various CC licenses, which ought incorporate the best wisdom about public licenses (most of which resides in the free software community) and not need to be versioned again for a decade. Additionally, among the issues under discussion for CC 4.0 licenses are ones of direct import to the free software community, including how DRM and license compatibility are addressed. Second, CC licenses have become fairly widely adopted as policy for public sector and publicly interested materials and funding, especially in education. Free software and even open standards are inadequately accounted for these developments, presenting a significant and unappreciated threat to the realization of public benefit from such -- a continuation of the tendency of free culture (with the exception of Wikimedia) being dependent on proprietary web silos. This talk will very briefly summarize the relevant history, describe the pertinent CC 4.0 licenses and policy issues, and hopefully provoke solutions and actions benefiting free software and free culture.
Speakers: Mike Linksvayer