[cc-community] NC For Software

rob at robmyers.org rob at robmyers.org
Thu Sep 7 07:23:24 EDT 2006


One thing I am noticing is that people are starting to use NC for software.
There was an example of this at the iCommons summit where someone had released
some abandoneware under NC. Thus defeating the point of abandonware, which is
to encourage the ongoing availability of work that will not be developed
further.

More often though I'm seeing JavaScript and PHP scripts being released as NC.
The CMS theme question on the license list just now is an example of this. The
reasons for NC-ing scripts are worse than for NC-ing almost any other kind of
software. Scripts are small, easily re-used and will return great value to the
author if they are incorporated in derivative works that the author can re-use
to make money. They may look more like text than other forms of code, but they
are still software.

Non-commercial, educational, etc. licenses for software lost out to actually
free licenses years ago. It's just a little frustrating to see people mis-using
an NC content license on software in this way.

/rant.

I suppose the thing I'd like to say to CC is please can you guys re-emphasise
that the licenses are not for software. :-)

- Rob.



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