[cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL

Joachim Durchholz jo at durchholz.org
Mon Apr 23 14:58:10 EDT 2007


Thinh Nguyen schrieb:
>>From our FAQ: "We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good
> software licenses available today."

Been there, read that.

However, I do think that GPL and LGPL can be improved upon.

Not so much in the way of serving their respective purposes better - in 
fact they do that just fine.
However, they aren't applicable to all situations. The GPL is 
Attribution/Derivative/Share-Alike, the LGPL is Attribution/Derivative. 
There's no option for Noncommercial or No-Derivative.

I think cc.org could help here. From a layman's point of view, all 
cc.org would have to do would be a broader definition of Derivative, 
namely that the licensor would have to give out all the means to 
actually produce a derivative works as far has he has them. That should 
cover source code, patent rights, keys, whatever.
This being just an informed layman's point of view, I'm pretty sure 
there's a lot of legal footwork involved to get this right, but it would 
be very helpful. Just imagine that people wouldn't be forced to roll 
their own licenses because the GPL agenda doesn't fit the constraints 
under which they can make their software Open Source.

Just my 10c,
Jo



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