Being an open sourcer and also being intrigued by the creativity sparkled by open environments (e.g. the ability to remix/mashup CC content) what I'd really like to see is a GPL style permission inside SL.

So far permissions in SL seem to exist primarily to serve commercially oriented creators. It is of course possible to leave builds full perm but from my experience a whole lot (and far too many) end up in boxes or remixed with commercial builds, to the point where some stuff which started free/full perm is hard to find in it's original form.

In the real world, open content has established sort of a parallel continuum where creation exists apart from commercial interest an where creativity and cooperation is creating results which match or even surpass the quality of the commercial realm. Part of this success seems to come from the fact that the tools (licenses) now exist (tagging something as GPL, MIT or CC) to serve the intent of creators who wish to contribute to that part of life.

My suggestion therefore is to create a permission flag for SL content that expresses the intent of the creator that the creation shall remain free and open, available for reuse/mix/mashup but only with other parts and results remaining the same (free and open).

This could work in the same way as the current "next owner" rights, probably with two additions:

• splitting resell and give away into two permissions, ensuring that the item may be given away but not sold.
• next owner may not restrict permissions (limiting to the next owner's ability to set any of the "no" flags)

There are probably other combinations which I'm overlooking or details I'm missing that can be worked out through the comments on this JIRA but essentially with those extended permissions it should be prevented to link or embed the builds into/with other builds that do not carry the Open Content flag.

It's also clear that this can be circumvented in the same way as current permissions (that is copybotting, texture copying, etc.). It may also become difficult in terms of scripts, but scripts have the benefit of being able to include a license header into the script to express the creators intent and this seems to work sufficiently well already with AO scripts.

So, I don't expect it to be more successful than the current permission set in that regard, but now with Linden Labs making a clear commitment to Open Source with the system itself (viewer source, other parts), I think there should be an equivalent in world that gives open content creators the same tools that closed content creators currently have.

I'd like to solicit discussions of details here, this is intended merely as a starting point to sort out the details.