Development of Creative Commons licenses

[email AT greglondon.com]

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

unfortunately, "Shareware" has tainted the term a bit.

"Gift Economy" is a term that predates computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
and it also describes the 'snow ball effect' that happens
when someone contributes a gift to a community and it
crystalizes into something much bigger.

Linux is the computer age equivalent of a barn-raising,
and a barn-raising is an outcome of a self-sustaining gift
economy.

When you think of it in terms of a culture that can
sustain a gift economy indefinitely and to the level of
being able to build something as work intensive and
complex as a barn (or linux), then you begin to see how
you fit into the model as a carpenter.

So it's not "gift" as in getting a gift for your birthday,
its 'gift' as in 'gift economy' as in a culture that is
able to give someone the gift of a barn raising.