Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Alexandre Dulaunoy <alexandre.dulaunoy AT ael.be>]

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, Per I. Mathisen wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 email AT greglondon.com wrote:
> > I was actually surprised that Creative Commons had
> > a No-Commercial use option on their license selection.
> ...
> > If Creative Commons wants to cultivate a rich body of works
> > that people can pool from, it should seriously consider
> > reducing the options to two licenses:
> >
> > CC-BY-SA : attribution sharealike
> > CC-BY-ND-NC : noderiviative noncommercial
>
> I agree, although I wouldn't drop CC-BY and CC-BY-ND.
>
> Offering both CC-SA and CC-BY-SA at the same time while being incompatible
> is silly. Too easy to lose the ability to share with another CC project by
> 'accident'.
>
> CC-SA-NC should not be offered as a license option - it is a dangerous
> trap for the unwary. A read up on the historical situation with the
> original roguelike games should offer an instructive insight into why. I
> can see why an author may want to use NC to require others to pay him for
> commercial applications - but when it becomes a shared/derived work with
> multiple authors, this option is quickly lost, and all that remains is an
> ill-defined clause against 'commercial use' that will haunt the project
> forever.
>
> The 'no-commercial' clause is really bad for community projects. It places
> a restriction that is very hard to interpret, and there is no longer any
> one copyright holder who can clear up any confusion or give explicit
> permissions.

I  fully agree on  the subject.   As we  are currently  evaluating the
various CC  licenses that  can be incorporated  in the  Andria project
(http://www.freearchive.org/) and the "NC" is clearly an issue because
we  want  that  the   freearchive  is  fully  distributed  in  various
fashion. 'no-commercial' is quite  vague and restrict the distribution
approach. But the author is free  to choose but I think that should be
noted on the CC website.

Just my .02 EUR.

adulau

-- 
** Alexandre Dulaunoy (adulau) **** http://www.foo.be/ **** 0x44E6CBCD
**/ "To  disable the  Internet to  save EMI  and Disney  is  the moral
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**/ livelihood of monastic scribes." Jon Ippolito.