[cc-community] Public-domain-style licenses (was Re: Why "Wiki license" = CC-BY-SA?)

Greg London email at greglondon.com
Fri Jan 18 23:29:53 EST 2008


Terry wrote:
> Greg London wrote:
>> "Public Domain Plus One"
>
> I think that's really cheesy, myself.

I'm not concerned about cheese,
I'm only concerned about clarity.
If some number of people are confused by
"Public Domain Style License",
and some significantly smaller number of
people will be confused by "PD+1", then I'll
go with PD+1.

I lost my pride a long time ago.

> So, I think "attribution" covers it.

Attribution almost exclusively refers to
the CC-BY license type of attribution,
i.e. giving the author credit in whatever
way is appropriate for the medium.

Not all PD+1 licenses have this sort of
attribution requirement. MIT and BSD being
the two most obvious. I think the term
"attribution" would be at least as confusing
as "public domain style license", if not more.

Maybe "attribution style license", but that's
little better than "public domain style license",
so I'm not in favor of it.

PD+1 may be cheesy, but one could argue that
the term "copyleft" was an equally cheesy play
on words. copyleft instead of copyright.
left is opposite of right, and copyleft is
opposite of copyright. Except copyright was
talking about rights to do things, not starboard
position.

PD+1 may be cheesy, but if no one confuses a
PD+1 license with an actual Public Domain work,
then I'm fine with a little cheese now and then.

So, the question is one of whether or not
"Public Domain Plus One" or "PD+1" is clear
to novice and experts alike that it is obviously
NOT refering to a work whose copyright has
expired and has entered the Public Domain.

I think it's pretty clear it's a different thing.

Greg


Greg




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