[cc-licenses] open source non commercial license

Henri Sivonen hsivonen at iki.fi
Mon Feb 5 11:32:09 EST 2007


On Feb 5, 2007, at 17:52, Emerson Clarke wrote:
> As such i think it has both significant educational and commercial
> value.  I would like to be able to provide it free to the open source
> and academic communities, but i do not wish for people to be able to
> gain commercially from my work.

You can't--by definition. If the license doesn't allow commercial  
use, it isn't an Open Source license. If your license does not allow  
commercial use, you are not sharing with the Open Source community.

It is very unfortunate that CC has licenses that don't allow  
commercial use under the same brand as its licenses that follow Free  
Software and Open Source principles. Moreover, it is very unfortunate  
that content licensed under these "non-commercial" licenses is  
paraded as "Open Content" or "Open Music" and the association with  
Open Source risks diluting the meaning of Open Source. (Likewise,  
parading such content as "Free Culture" risks diluting the meaning of  
Free Software.)

I suggest focusing on how you can make money instead of focusing on  
preventing others from gaining commercially.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/





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