[cc-community] Kudos for programmers and text writers alike

Takemoto timtak at nihonbunka.com
Mon Oct 17 11:12:45 EDT 2005


 Dear Rob Myers, Daniel Carrera, Drew Roberts, Greg London
 
 Thank you all very much for your detailed responses.

 ( The most important part of this mail, to me is the bit enclosed in lines of
 ******************************************************************* )
 
 I am sorry I have been posting to the wrong list till now. I hope this mail
 makes sense on the "community" mailing list. First of all a self-introduction
 
 I am a British guy, 40yrs old, once-a-long-time-ago a programmer, now
 an English and psychology teacher at a Japnaese university, that uses 
 and participates in open source software, and hopes that more teachers 
 cooperate in the open source way/wave/praxis. I believe that the open 
 source.. modus opperandi will spread. This is my flickr account:
 http://flickr.com/photos/nihonbunka/

 Sometimes the GPL (thanks!) on software helps the creator to earn money, 
 sometimes the GPL just presents the possibility of earning money, sometimes 
 it results in positive PR (for jobs, cooperators or even friends). And sometimes 
 it does not have these results. But the GPL is has these possibilties.
 
 Software forks can introduce a breach in the distributive network, but at least with 
 scripted software,  the url of the original source remains visible (I believe) in the 
 copyright notice of the code. (I have rejected a fork and gone back to the source for 
 this reason. And, BTW, on Typo3 for instance there has been a debate about what 
 consitutes  a fork, and the amount of improvement required before a product can be 
 "rebranded". I am not sure how off-base, or not, the Typo 3 leaders are. In any event, 
 forking can be fraught. It can cause blood to boil; think Mambo. It can be difficult to 
 do lightly. But this is a side issue.) 
 
 The CC licences *on text* do not provide the same sort of distributive advantage 
 that is *often* (not always! :-)) inherent (but not stipulated) in sotware with a GPL 
 licence. The means of distribution is "safeguarded," or enhanced, in the sense 
 that the OS software writer often recieves (to coin phrases) 'improved distributive 
 network positioning',  or 'increased product/skill/url awareness' among end users 
 and fellow creators alike. Whatever you call it, there are real, or at least real possibilities
 of real world advantage, accrued by using the GPL.
 
 I believe this or something similar is often reffered to as "kudos." I think that kudos 
 refers to both psychological  factors, and to the "improved distributive network 
 positioning."  I believe that both are related, and both are very important. 
 
 Rob Myers writes
 > There are practical differences between cultural works and code, but  
 > to be honest none matter enough to explain the utter lack of SA  
 > literature and art we're seeing. We need projects like GNU or  
 > Wikipedia for *culture*.
 
 I agree entirely that there is a great lack of SA in several areas. How do you 
 explain the lack? (please see my last paragraph)
 
 Back to the new (ish) licence that i am proposing...

 If there were a "*Strict* Share Alike" licence, stipulating that the exact same 
 (online licence) be used, then the derivative work would have to be on the 
 Net somewhere. That does not mean exclusively on the net, just so long 
 as it is posted to the Net as well. 
 
 The problem then remains, if the text were put on some Internet backwater
 where no one saw it, it might as well not be there. Then, as someone was so
 kind as to point out, one would have to either:
 
 1) Insist that authors notify the originator. If the FLOSS people put up with
 it for a while, then perhaps this was not so outlandishly restrictive. 
 *******************************************************************
 Is there a copy of that early "notify me" (?) GPL licence somewhere?
 *******************************************************************

 2) Insist that: the text use the strict-same online licence; give its own url;, 
 and not use masking of the referer when people click links. So then the users 
 of the text, might go to the new URL, click through to the first author's site, 
 and thus the first author would find out where the derivative work is. 
 
 Whatever, folks, I think that the "utter lack" pointed out by Rob Myers
 can be tackled by adjusting the licence to create the same (real, potential,
 and or psychological) advantages that exist in the case of GPL'ed software.

 Software programmers are not superhuman, super nice, or super brainy. 
 They are, of course, like other creators of other types of content. When similar
 circumstances apply in each situation (software and text etc.), then those "other 
 creators" (of texts etc.) will behave in similar ways.

 It may be impossible to create sufficiently similar circumstances in these other
 fields. 

 But I am hopeful! 
 
 Tim
 
 Timothy Takemoto




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