development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[email AT greglondon.com]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:00:19 -0400, Stephen Downes wrote:
>My perception differs. It seems to me that while the Creative
>Commons people are in favour, the rest of the people posting,
>and the majority, are opposed.

I'm not sure whether the majority is for or against,
my gut tells me that it doesn't matter.
There doesn't seem to be any pressure from Creative Commons
to push for licenses that follow its mission statement of
creating a public commons of works or staying true to the
spirit of the Open Source Definition.

Instead, I've gotten the impression that Creative Commons
pushes for licenses that will get more works contributed
under a Creative Commons license, regardless of what restrictions
the license contains.

The real mission statement appears to be "some rights reserved 
is better than all rights reserved", which means any request
for a new license restriction will be approved, regardless of
whether it has anything to do with a commons, regardless of
whether it follows the spirit of open source.

I strongly support Creative Commons mission statement.
The idea of taking the concepts of open source and 
a public commons beyond software and into the realm of
music and photos and video is awesome. However, CC's
execution is amiss of that mission statement, and they
don't seem to be interested in correcting the mismatch.

They can offer restrive licenses if that's their desire, 
but they should inform people that said licenses are in 
opposition to its mission statement of a public commons 
and in conflict with the Open Source Definition.
EDU-Only will not be meet the Open Source Definition.

That, or they should change their mission statement to 
clearly distance themselves from the Open Source Definition
and possibly change their URL to www.somerightsreserved.org
or something more in alignment with advancing licenses
that are not about a commons.

All I can do is withdraw endorsement of Creative Commons
until they honor their mission statement or change it 
to reflect their current list of licenses. I've changed
the license on my perl training manual to GNU-FDL.