[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
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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.
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Is there a copy of that early "notify me" (?) GPL licence somewhere?
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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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