Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

I realize I'm becoming something of a cc-licenses crackpot,
but I still have a few comments.

0) I think it's a bad idea for Creative Commons to be a license
   factory. Information about how the _current_ licenses work is still
   pretty shaky:

          
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2003-November/000189.html

   ...and there are a lot of questions people have that go
   unanswered, like how the licenses work together. 

   Wouldn't it be better to stabilize, popularize, and iteratively
   improve the current licenses, rather than popping out new licenses
   every few months?

   I realize that CC is under pressure from folks who say, "I want a
   Creative Commons license except it does X or Y instead of Z or W",
   but maybe it'd be better to concentrate on doing a few things well
   before spreading out all over the place.

1) Branding issues.

   It's hard enough already for people to grok that there's more than
   one CC license. That there's 11... no, plus the Public Domain
   dedication... and then the Sampling... don't forget Founders'
   Copyright... plus these iCommons things... and what's this CC-GPL
   about?... oh and now the Music Sharing license.

   Dilute your brand and you have no brand. Marketing 101.

2) Bad names. The Sampling license is not the license that allows you
   to sample music; it's the license that _just_ allows you to sample
   music. The Music Sharing License is not the license that allows you
   to share music; it's the license that _just_ allows you to share
   music.

3) What happened to the public review period? I thought that was how
   new licenses happened:

       http://creativecommons.org/discuss

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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