BY-SA and GPL: creativecommons closed the chasm in the sharealike/copyleft community

This is the biggest news item for free culture and free software in the past 5 years: The creativecommons attribution sharealike license is now one-way compatible to the GPL — see the message from creativecommons and from the Free Software Foundation.

• Blender rigs under cc by-sa which use libraries under GPL are safe against suing, even if a Blender code contributor goes crazy,
• 3D models like the self replicating 3D printer RepRap and libre hardware designs under cc by-sa and GPL can be combined,
• GPL-compatible Free Software can utilize all content from the Wikipedia and
• On the personal side: we can merge art from Ryzom and Battle for Wesnoth and use both in the Pirate Party RPG.

Some license compatibility legalese might sound small, but the impact of this is hard to overestimate.

(I’ll now revise some of my texts about licensing — CC BY-SA got a major boost in utility because it not longer excludes usage in copyleft documents which need the source to have a defended sharealike clause)