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cc-licenses - Re: Free as in freedom (was Re: Music Sharing License Commentary)

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
  • To: "email AT greglondon.com" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Free as in freedom (was Re: Music Sharing License Commentary)
  • Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 15:24:22 +0000

On Friday, March 19, 2004, at 03:06PM, <email AT greglondon.com> wrote:

>one big problem, as I see it, is that the vocabulary
>doesn't yet quite match up with the intent. "open" and
>"free" and "public" are all trying to describe somethign
>that is really best called a "gift". Hence the name of the
>document is "Drafting the Gift Domain", which is like
>Public Domain, but rather than having rights expire and
>enter a Public Domain, authors GIFT their rights to a gift
>domain so that people can use them immediately.

IMVHO, "gift" will send people running more surely than "free". I think
"shared" is better because it's what one actually does by participating in
free/open/commons/gift culture.

Technically, "defensively copyrighted" is a good description:
free/open/commons/gift contributors copyright their work to prevent its use
being limited, traditional "offensively copyrighted" work is designed to
limit its use.

The GPL as an ironization of copyright law is a nice angle as well.

>Drafting the Gift Domain was intended for any Author who
>wished to contribute their Writing to a Gift Economy, be
>it music, or software, or literature, or whatever.
>
>I'm looking for feedback on the document from people "in
>the know" about open content. Any comments welcome. Please
>send them to me off-list.

It's an excellent document, thank you for producing it. I was interested to
see that you settled on GPL and BSD for quite different reasons from myself.
:-)

One point I'd make is that having shared cultural material available helps
companies in easily costablke ways: it's usually quicker and cheaper to add
to something that already exists than to start from scratch. Making
modifications open as well can be regarded as payment. I've worked at
startups, and on new projects in existing companies, and if open
source/content isn't available it takes a lot more work to get going. Sadly
this goes against the asset-stripping mindset of much contemporary business.
:-(

- Rob.




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