A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 11:07PM, Ryan S. Dancey 
<ryand AT organizedplay.com> wrote:

[Regarding the CC licenses]
>1)  They are very complex.  

The 2.0 licenses are even more complex than the 1.0 licenses, but they are 
handling all sorts of translation and specific legal issues for music and 
different media. I think CC would just like people to use the "Human 
Readable" precis of the licenses, but I don't think that's a very good idea 
legally speaking.

For anyone who hasn't read the OGL, it is a very good example of a license 
that is both complete (for its domain) and readable: I do recommend people 
give it a look.

>Most of the open content licenses I reviewed treated material as if it
>would be assembled into separate units:  modules in the form of source
>code, or chapters/appendices in the form of written material.  Nothing I
>found took a technology and presentation neutral stance to how open and
>non-open content could be combined and protected under different
>licensing terms.

I think some CC licenses allow non-viral aggregation, but they certainly 
don't provide the fine-grained control the OGL does. I think an "atomic" or 
"modular" clause for the CC licenses might be an interesting way of getting 
this effect.

Looking at the parts of the D&D IP that you Opened, I'm interested that none 
of the older campaign settings were opened, although IIRC some have been 
given to specific members of the community now. And also that the fiction 
lines weren't opened. This strikes me as strange given the potential for fan 
(community) buy-in and production in both these areas. Was this ever 
considered or was it outside the area you were concentrating on? 

- Rob.