[cc-community] by-nd for software
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Mon Oct 22 21:21:25 EDT 2007
niknot,
> Somehow this turned from a discussion of which existing
> software license fits best the distribution model we have
> chosen into a discussion of what our software distribution
> model should be.
That's because your requirements are mutually exclusive and
have no answer.
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2007-October/002326.html
: I am creating a "free software library" that I'd like
: to distribute under the following conditions:
(distribution of source code is prohibited)
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2007-October/002328.html
: GNU (and BSD) would be my logical choices; however
: I have a problem with both in that I need to prevent
: the modifications and derivatives
So, the license that "best fits" your requirements
is foiled by your mutually exclusive requirements,
which is why your requirements are being questioned.
No "free software library" license does what you
want it to do. GNU and BSD aren't even close to your
far more restrictive requirement of
"No distribution of source code allowed".
And I just perused all your posts to the list, and
have yet to see a clarification of whether you want
a Free Software license, or if you are willing to
chuck that requirement to lock down your source code.
No license that would do what you want would qualify
as Free. Yet you start out by saying you want a Free
license, and follow up by saying GNU and BSD would
be your first choice, but (mumble mumble mumble).
Quite regularly, people come on to the CC mailing
list, say they want a Free license but they need
it to restrict this and that and something else, and
before you know it, you've got something more like
CC-NC-ND-BY or similar. And that ain't Free.
Which leads me to believe that you don't understand
the concept of Free well enough to even know that
you're not talking about a Free license anymore.
And which also leads me to wonder if your argument
that your code needs a lockdown because the community
will ruin it for you has any basis in experience
or is more a matter of hypotheticals. I certainly haven't
seen the issues you are trying to defend against in
the FLOSS community. I've seen forks and whatnot,
but I've never seen the community ruin something
to the point that others don't want to use it.
And you only say your application is special
and needs this protection. But you don't say
what your application does. So there's no way for
me to know if there really is something unique
about your software that separates it from
the decades of open source software that came before it.
If you want to license you work CC-NC-ND-BY-XYZ-Whatever,
that's your business. You don't have to use a Free license.
Most people use Non-Free CC licenses such as CC-NC-something.
And people on the list are willing to help direct people
in the right direction for what they need.
But you say you want a Free license,
immediately followed by a list of NonFree requirements.
You say your software *needs* this non-free protection,
but no application I know of has suffered such a
terrible fate as to have a community render it unusable
to the point that users won't even go to the original
website to download the unaltered version.
You don't say what your application is, so I have no
idea how yours would be so different than all the others.
But basically, it comes down to the simple fact that
no one is answering your question because your question
contains mutually exclusive requirements.
So in an attempt to iron out what is really important,
here are some questions for you:
What is your application, exactly, that makes you think
that it requires source code lockdown?
What do you think you'll gain from the Community
if you release it under a license that prohibits
source code modifications?
What Free software applications are you refering to that
you say have been ruined by the community to the point
that users don't use them?
Greg
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