Does the Creative Commons license support multiple authors?

Hi everyone. So I’ve been working on and improving a 3D model over the past few months. The mesh and textures were made publicly available several years ago by the two original creators, then another person imported them in Blender and posted his own version, based on which I created mine.

Once my version is ready, I wish to publish it on Blendswap and possibly other websites. I already contacted some of the authors, and the idea seems to be that it’s okay to post it as long as I credit them. Problem is that to make it safely usable, I need to publish it under an exact license. In this case that would be CC-BY-SA, which best matches the artists wishes.

But there’s one thing that still confuses me: How do I include multiple authors in the license? Do the CC-BY-* licenses allow a list of people, or can the license officially address only one author? I wish to include both persons who created the mesh, the person who then imported and rigged it in Blender, then myself for the modifications and additions I made… a total of four people.

In what form is it best to do this, and what is the exact correct way? Thank you.

include all files and all licences? or link to them?
seperate but equal?

another thing,

I post the licence in the blend in the text editor, and scale it to take up most of the screen,
I am not sure but it seems pretty impossible to not see the documentation.

There is only one file (the blend), all textures are packed inside it. I’m planning to credit everyone in a text file, although it does sound like a good idea to embed it in the text editor as well which I’ll probably do.

The problem is who to say that it’s licensed as CC-BY-SA to. Is it sane to add the entire list, and write “this model is licensed CC-BY-SA to X, Y, Z and W”? I don’t personally see why not, but I haven’t done this carefully before so I’m just making extra sure.

Have a read of http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
I am far from an expert, but under appropriate credit it mentions attribution parties, so I would assume you would list all contibutors.

If you do end up listing everyone, you should make it clear what parts were their work (i.e. list each person plus what their contribution was)

Sounds like you are making what is called a derivative work. As a derivative work, the original authorship doesn’t change, but the creative commons licence does ask that you identify the modifications made to the original work. In some cases, this can be nothing more than a simple statement like “the original work was modified by so-and-so”, although if there are specific changes or additions it is a nice idea to be specific: “rigging added to original work by so-and-so” or “textures upgraded by so-an-so”.

Seems like you want to say: “this model is licensed CC-BY-SA to X and Y, with modifications by Z and W”. It’s a good idea to keep track of who added what in an accompanying text file included with the mesh.

Thanks, that is helpful! Then the short version will probably be something like “this model is licensed CC-BY-SA, created by X and Y, ported to Blender by Z, several modifications by W”.

This is probably the most sensible way to go. That said, if you’ve only got a limited amount of space, you could also go with “Licensed CC-BY-SA. Please see included/embedded contributor list.”

Wouldn’t simply going with the most restrictive license at the front be the ideal way? At least then people know that they should assume that restrictive license until they’ve read or seen something that tells them otherwise. For example, if there’s three artists involved in a team, two release their work under CC BY, and the last CC BY NC, then simply putting the CC BY NC license in the footer and then, as Fweeb suggested, put in a file somewhere that certain works are available at a less restricted license. That’s the way I’d probably go about this.