Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Mike Linksvayer said:
> Greg London wrote:
>> Linux developed and survived over 20 years
>
> 12 years.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#History

to quote your link:
:: The GNU project was begun in 1983 to develop a
:: complete Unix-like operating syste

GNU-Emacs was released in 1985.
gcc was written in 1987.
the GNU-GPL was created in 1988.
Linus Torvalds releases Linux kernel 1991.

So, when I say "Linux", I mean the
"Linux distribution" you get from RedHat, et al,
NOT the Linux Kernel specifically.

The linux distribution is much more than
the operating system proper. it's editors
and compilers and applications.

>> alongside Microsoft because Copyleft gave
>> the code to everyone and it prohibited the
>> likes of Microsoft from taking it private,
>> extending it, and competing against the
>> original Linux.
>
> Apache has been far more successful
> <http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html> versus
> Microsoft.  Apache is not copylefted.


As far as apache is concerned, the question is
whether or not any market competition can
add so many proprietary extensions that the
Apache group cannot keep up.

I mean, IBM and Oracle use apache in software
that they sell, but does that software compete
directly with Apache market space?
(Oracle database and IBM websphere application
server, according to wikipedia entry for apache.)
And do the proprietary extensions justify
paying IBM money instead of getting Apache's
version for free?

I think Apache is in a niche market where
proprietary forks just don't make sense to
any commercial player.

How much can you extend a web server?

If XYZ Corp does a proprietary fork,
it can't be too major of a change
because there's a base of web browsers
that it has to be compatible with.
Since any change will be "small",
the Apache developers are likely able
to add any functionality that a
proprietary version would include.

Any attempt to embrace and extend
Apache would fail to extinguish it
because the Apache group will be able
to keep up.

Because Apache is in a niche market
where embrace/extend/extinguish is
not possible, they don't need Copyleft.

They don't need Copyleft's protection
against market competition because
they're operating in a niche where
embrace/extend/extinguish is not a
market reality.


The linux distribution, on the other hand,
has an open ended set of features that could
be embraced and extended by proprietary players.
The only thing that keeps a Gift Economy flowing
is that the contributers see their gifts being
used. Copyleft is the
no-money-down-no-payments-ever
way of a Gift Economy preventing Microsoft from
embracing their work, creating a proprietary
version with too many features for the Gift
Economy to keep up with, and extinguish the
Gift Economy.


The FreeAdvertising licenses from CreativeCommons
address the embrace/extend protection differently.
Rather than create a GiftEconomy, the licenses create
FreeAdvertising. The CC-NC license means that any
market competition must ask permission before it
embraces and extends. This also gets the author
some money, which might allow them to improve the
CC-NC version.

However, this prevents CC-NC works from generating
a large base of contributers like Copyleft or PD,
because why contribute when the Author might be
making money off my contribution selling a
commercial license to XYZ Corp? It will be interesting
to see if a SCO-style lawsuit ever occurs because
someone contributed to a CC-NC project and they
want a cut of the profits when the original author
sells a commercial license to XYZ Corp.

So, ShareAlike prevents market competition
from embracing/extending/extinguishing a
GiftEconomy project of many, many developers.

CC-NonCommercial prevents market competition
from embracing/extending/extinguishing an
individual project.

Mixing the two together by allowing
the CC-ShareAlike-NonCommercial combination is
TOTALLY MISUNDERSTANDING HOW THEY WORK
OR WHY THEY EXIST.