Does people have to share the "source code"?

Gottfried Hofmann toddd at mypse.goracer.de
Fri Aug 27 20:57:31 EDT 2004


>>source = allow editing
> 
> 
> This is true but isn't the whole picture. If I provide an audio track, people can edit it by sampling and remixing it. If I provide the samples, score and lyrics under a Free license, they can do a lot more. One of the advantages of requiring people to provide source material rather than just editable end-products is that it ensures teh availability of and distributes a pool of source material for Free use. It populates the commons. This mirrors the effects of the GPL in this area.
> 
> I think the license feature would be CC-PS : "Provide Source". :-)


That's a problem because it's not obvious what's a "source". For example:
I released all my stuff GPL until someone told me I have to provide 
"sources". In my understanding, the source for a sound is the sound 
itself and the source for an image is the image itself.
But this guy told me that the source for an image is all the layers and 
stuff you used to create it. So the source for a sound file is the 
original file plus the history of all changes you made to it.
There are two major problems with that:

1st: What a about a foto of a car for example? The "source" would be the 
car itself, which I of course cannot provide.

2nd: The "source" for my audio files can not be provided because I 
cannot save the history with my program

That's why I wanted to switch to CC, but unfortunately, CC 2.0 does not 
provide CC-SA anymore, but that is another story...

I'd recommend anyone who wants his "sources" to be shared to use GPL. It 
was made for this purpose :-)



More information about the cc-licenses mailing list