Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 26 May 2004, at 01:28, Glenn Otis Brown wrote:

> ***Warranties? Up to licensors
>
> Unlike the 1.0 licenses, the 2.0 licenses include language that makes
> clear that licensors' disclaim warranties of title, merchantibility,
> fitness, etc. As readers of this blog know by now, the decision to
> drop warranties as a standard feature of the licenses was a source of
> much organizational soul-searching and analytical thinking for us.
> Ultimately we were swayed by a two key factors: (1) Our peers, most
> notably, Karl Lenz[7], Dan Bricklin[8], and MIT[9]. (2) The
> realization that licensors could sell warranties to risk-averse,
> high-exposure licensees interested in the due diligence paper trial,
> thereby creating nice CC business model. (See the Prelinger Archive
> [10] for a great example of this free/fee, as-is/warranty approach.)
> You can find extensive discussion of this issue[11] in previous posts
> on this blog. (See Section 5[12].)

1.0 included such language! (Apart from warranting representation, 
which was too strong).

For me the argument was not about warranties but about the 
representation of authority to contribute.

I am disappointed that "warranties" have been confused with 
representation. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It 
will make a few shrill bloggers happy, and blogger *are* one of CC's 
core markets from what I can see, but it *will* create problems in the 
future.

Apart from this and the lack of non-attribution (which I was 
considering switching to) the 2.0 licenses are excellent.

- Rob.