development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[email AT greglondon.com]

On Mon,  9 Feb 2004 11:20:47 -0500, Zachary Chandler wrote:
> Which then seems more attractive: a larger pool
> comprised, in part, of more restricted content, 
> or a smaller pool of open content?

Ack!!! no wonder the push for an education-only license
continues. You begin with the questionable assumption 
that more educators will contribute to an education-only 
license. And you bifurcate the issue into only two simple 
options: 
open-license-gives-small-pool or 
edu-license-gives-big-pool

A third alternative would be educating the teachers.
Even IF the assumption is correct that more teachers
would contribute to a education-only license, that 
could be changed with an enrollment campaign of getting
the word out to teachers that something like CC-BY-SA
would tap into a much bigger commons than CC-BY-TeachersOnly.

Richard Stallman created teh first GNU-GPL license in 1984.
The first program to use the license was a text editor.
Linus Torvalds wrote the first linux kernel in 1991.
RedHat went IPO selling Linux installations in 1999.
SIXTEEN YEARS to get from zero to MILLIONS of Linux installations.

I promise you that you will NEVER see this level of growth,
adoption, and expansion, on a work that is licensed
education only.  

What might be missing is some educator who fills a similar
role that Stallman, Torvalds, or RedHat filled in the 
Linux OS licensed under GNU-GPL, someone who can rally
contributions from one phase to the next. The initial
GNU project was long on ideas and short on actual works.
bits and pieces came together slowly. A text editor
and a compiler were the first components that came available.
The Linus provided an actual working Kernel. It was
a minimalistic OS, but it worked, and there was a surge
in interest. Then RedHat came along and created a business
model off of linux, pushing Linux beyond the technophiles
and into the homes of people who only needed a CD drive
and compatible hardware. 

If you want educational materials to follow this kind
of track, then you'll want a public license like 
CC-BY-SA that will eventually allow world-wide contributions
from anyone, anywhere, in any field of work,
and will allow companies like RedHat to create 
a business on it.

If you push an educational only license, you may
increase the number of initial contributions, but
you will be much harder pressed to move the project
beyond the initial, Richard Stallman phase of
little more than a working text editor and C compiler.