Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sigmascape1 AT cs.com]

Mr. London,

I agree with your thoughts on the public domain. I would never want material 
I dedicate not to have commercial (proprietary) value. In fact, it is one of 
the reasons I do release items with no rights reserved. The commons, and by 
that I do mean the public domain, has taken numerous hits over the years. 
Congress has made it harder and harder for material to enter the pd. By 
literally giving certain content back to the commons, we all win... 
private/personal/proprietary uses are all allowed. 

Thanks!!!!

MLF

www.sigmascape.com



>
>
>Rob Myers said:
>> On 21 Oct 2004, at 18:01, Sigmascape1 AT cs.com wrote:
>>
>>> Dedicating content to the public domain is critical to the success of
>>> the open content movement.
>>
>> IMHO quite the opposite: every dedication to the Public Domain
>> undermines the Open Content movement. PD work can be used without
>> giving anything back. It will not grow the commons. I can easily see
>> companies pushing PD and PD-alike licenses to allow them to take
>> people's work: see the sudden liking that Microsoft/AdTI found for the
>> BSD license when faced with the success of the GPL.
>
>Well, there's some loose use of language there.
>
>> It will not grow the commons.
>
>The "commons" is a Public Domain concept, so every PD dedication
>will grow the commons.  CreativeCommons is not the same as THE "commons".
>The commons is like the shared pasture or shared ocean resources.
>
>>every dedication to the Public Domain undermines the Open Content movement
>
>Well, not "every" dedication. I think it is simply a function of
>whether or not the project can finish or whether it is surpassed
>by proprietary competition that uses the Public Domain work against
>the very project that created it.
>
>A project that has a fixed goal, does not require a lot of maintenance,
>and does not require a lot of long-term collaboration, could probably
>dedicate its finished product ot the Public Domain without problem.
>
>There are two different conditions where a public domain dedication
>may be problematic.
>
>(1) if the project is long-running or simply does not have a
>clear "when we get to this point, we're finished" goal, putting the
>work-in-progress into the public domain would allow proprietary
>competition to consume and extend and possibly extinguish the
>original public-domain project. The linux operating system,
>and all the applications that generally go with a computer,
>would be well advised to avoid the Public Domain ot prevent
>Microsoft from using PD code to compete against a PD project.
>Wikipedia is an ever-growing project and needs share-alike
>or similar copyleft mechanisms to protect it in the long-term.
>
>(2) if the project could be adapted and extended to include
>a patent of any kind, then the Public Domain version of that
>project can never replicate that same functionality.
>As long as it remains in the realm of copyright, a Public Domain
>project conceivably could compete against a proprietary
>competitor, it would just take man-hours to do it. Once the
>proprietary competitor introduces a software patent, the
>Public Domain project is permanently locked out of ever
>implementing that functionality by law.
>
>I discuss this in detail here:
>
>http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html#8_Copyleft_or_Public_Domain_
>
>But if neither of these two points apply, then PD should be fine.
>
>If a project can successfully complete and has no danger
>of having patent restrictions applied, I see no reason
>to exclude proprietary interests from using the results
>of that project on principles alone.
>
>-- 
>Hungry for a good read? Crave science fiction?
>Get a taste of "Hunger Pangs" by Greg London.
>http://www.greglondon.com/hunger/
>
>
>