[cc-community] More discussion on NC

Andres Guadamuz a.guadamuz at ed.ac.uk
Mon Oct 11 04:03:01 EDT 2010


On 10/10/2010 21:24, Rob Myers wrote:

>> Interesting examples.I think Wikipedia works regardless of the
>> licensing, IMO what makes Wikipedia work is not the downstream use, but
>> the wiki interface and the community. Lots of small-time editors never
>> care about the licence (at least in my experience).
>
> I worked for the company that created and ran h2g2.com, which was a
> direct proprietary equivalent to Wikipedia . A non-zero number of users
> got annoyed when they realised they were sharecropping, and the
> licencing of the project was in my opinion one of the reasons it failed
> to reach critical mass.

I can tell you as a user for both. H2g2.com was clumsy, it had the right 
idea but was badly implemented. I remember writing an entry on Hull 
(long story...), and then never coming back. Not once did I look at the 
h2g2 licence, and that was at the time when I was immersed in open 
source licensing and writing about the legalities of it. I simply didn't 
care. Probably I was typical.

What sold me to wikipedia was not the licence, although I knew what the 
GFDL was. Wikipedia was fun and it was easy to edit. I don't think 
anyone I know ever cared about the licence. For example, I used 
Wikipedia in class, and I can say categorically that a tiny minority of 
my students were aware of the licence involved.

>> My point is that there is room for NC.
>
> NC is taking that room from better licensing IMO, and I'd rather it
> didn't have the CC seal of approval behind it.

This is where we disagree. I don't think that NC is taking room from 
better licensing. Under many circumstances NC works, and people like 
having the choice (I know I do). If I didn't have the choice, then I'd 
draft my own NC licence.

-- 
Andres Guadamuz
School of Law
Old College, South Bridge
Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

+44 131 6509699
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/staff/andresguadamuz/

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