A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 4 May 2005, at 04:05, David Christie wrote:

> Someone on the CC Licenses list, where I first posted this, suggested 
> it might also be relevant to the CC Bizcom list readership:
>
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2005-May/002272.html

This seems to be a way of enabling an impromptu partnership or 
co-operative through licensing. One of the great strengths of Free/Open 
licenses is the way they allow and indeed encourage impromptu value 
relationships to form in quite strong ways, so this is a very 
interesting way of modernising those ways of working.

One problem that springs to mind when combining this with Sharealike is 
that it's open to exploits. The revenue generated by the work is shared 
between copyright holders. So if I take your work, trivially modify it 
and make it available, and someone uses that, then I get some of the 
percentage for very little work. People will automate this process with 
scripts running on a computer that search the internet for content, 
automatically change the colour or font, search-and-replace certain 
words, add a little echo to it, and then re-upload it.
I assume that only people whose names appear in the derivation chain 
for a work share the percentage, but it could be argued that this 
removes some of the incentive for non-trivial downstream users to add 
(non-trivial) value to derivative works if they may not be rewarded. 
I've no problem with that, but many arguments around the economics of 
Free Culture/Software seem to assume a god-given right to profit for 
rightsholders whether anyone wants to buy their work or not.

On the subject of dual licensing, dual licensing is bad for the reasons 
Greg gives on cc-community. Dual licensing does not help commerce or 
culture. It decreases monetary value by discouraging sales of the 
commercial product and it decreases intellectual value by discouraging 
contributions to the Open product. I think dual licensing was discussed 
on this list a while back.

- Rob.