A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

[Marshall Van Alstyne <marshall AT MIT.EDU>]

Greetings, I'd like to announce the formation of a new discussion group
on Creative Commons.  

The goal is to develop a new form of hybrid commercial / non-commercial
license for various kinds of intellectual property with particular
emphasis on software.  We hope to combine the best of open source
and proprietary models.  In so doing, we'll explore questions
like:

        

Can we
create the greatest social welfare and the greatest innovation?

        

Can we
simultaneously benefit businesses, developers, and end users over the
long run?

        

Can we
build models of the process of software growth and diffusion?

This group will represent a forum for lively discussion and will be
charged with creating such a license.  More than just a set of
interesting debates, we'll also try to build models of the processes of
software growth and diffusion.  Thus the process of license design
itself should become a kind of recursive open science.
 
To get things started, we've placed a 1 page Overview of a
proposal and a longer Précis or description of economic tradeoffs
at <
http://creativecommons.org/discuss#commonwealth
>. The new topic will be the "creative commonwealth" to capture the idea that creative innovation, sharing, and property rights need not be mutually exclusive.  It will be reachable at cc-bizcom AT lists.ibiblio.org .   We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Marshall Van Alstyne 
Associate Professor of Information Economics, Boston University
Visiting Associate Professor MIT Center for E-Business
Co-chair of Licensing Working Group, Open Process Handbook Initiative