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cc-eyebeam - [cc-eyebeam] Tradeoff between flexibility & compatibility

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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: "rejiquar" <beads AT newcastlegardens.com>
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] Tradeoff between flexibility & compatibility
  • Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:16:30 -0500


Dear Mr. Paharia (and other members of this list):

I don't know enough to answer your larger questions, but I've spent a
fair portion of time cruising through the Creative Commons site, and
some specific difficulties that occurred to me. On the theory that
larger concepts are derived from specific problems perhaps you (all)
could address these:

In my view the SA (share-alike) analog in the GPL is a major part of
its value. I've been wanting to GPL most of my website for a while
now, and never got around to it; now a Creative Commons license seems
a more-suited choice since I am an artist, not a programmer.

The operative word is a, rather than the. The difficulty in choosing
licenses is the differing idealogical goals of derivative use. I have
no objections to people incorporating my work into theirs and selling
it; but if they feel really strongly their own work shouldn't be sold,
I don't have a problem with that, either.

I do have a problem with the non-commercial types reserving the right
to sell my incorporated work while forcing any of their derivers
downstream only to offer it for free, as this strikes me as
undermining the goal of the SA clause. These problems have been
touched upon in the Creative Commons archives, in which one person
stated flatly s/he did not want his/her work to be used by someone
with differing philosophical goals! Good grief, we all have differing
philosophies, on some level, surely?

So far as I can tell (big assumption, there, I realize) there is no
easy way to choose a license that allows me to allow either commercial
or non-commercial use downstream. GPL gets around this, so far as I
can tell, by not allowing restrictions on commerce.

This leads to what could be a potentially bigger problem, touched on
in the archives---what is called (I think?) the problem of
non-interleaving (or incompatible) licenses. The issue of
compatibility strikes me as such an important one I would give up the
non-commerical SA requirement mentioned above rather than sacrifice
the compatibility with other people's choices.

It seems to me that Creative Commons' tradeoffs between compatibility
between licenses and flexibility (for the licensor) is still in flux.
Where is it, and why does this position best further the goals of a
shared `Creative Commons'?

As I said, I haven't really figured out how these issues are to be
handled. I've really only been reading on this stuff for several
days, and I think very slowly. What do others think?

Thank you for your kind attention.

Very truly yours,

Sylvus Tarn

(Rejiquar)


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  • [cc-eyebeam] Tradeoff between flexibility & compatibility, rejiquar, 11/12/2003

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