Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>]

On 25 Nov 2004, at 12:35, mitro wrote:

> Here is the scenario:
> 
> - I create a CMS (Content Management System), a set of php script
> which is used to set up quickly a website. - I choose the licence CC
> by-nc-sa for my work - Some people help me working on my CMS, adding
> some code, patches, graphics, etc.
> 
> Questions:
> - Who is considered as 'author' of the CMS ?
> --> me, because I am the one who create the project ?
> --> every people who did some work on the project ?

#2, everybody who created code/art/documentation for the project.
 
> - What happen if someone ask me to earn money using the CMS (someone
> wants to sell a internet site which uses the CMS to an enterprise)?
> --> Can I authorize if I want without ask other developpers, or I must
> ask the whole team of developpers if they agree ?

You must ask all copyright holders, in other words the entire team.
 
> - What happen if I want to change my licence ?
> --> Can I change it myself or I must ask the whole team of developpers?

Again, you must ask all copyright holders, in other words the whole 
team.

> It sounds strange if the author is the only who can decide to
> authorize commercial use, change licence, etc.

Yes, that's called copyright. Copyright law has turned into a rather 
convoluted jumble of rules.

In this case, however, there is nothing strange: you are not _the_ 
author, but merely one of the many authors that worked on the 
project. Every author has copyrights to the work they've done.

Often, in open source projects it is really one person, or a small 
group of persons, that does the bulk of all the work. If you look at 
the GIMP, which is, I understand a fairly large project, most of the 
work there is done by two people. 

What you could do in such a case, is keep two trees: one with only 
your code, and one with the other code folded in. Then if somebody 
wants to buy a license for commercial use, you can license them the 
code from the first tree, to which you only (or a small group of 
trusted contributors) hold the rights.

There is a small danger in that scenario; if your customers ask for 
changes that are already in the larger tree, you must code them 
yourself. And since you have probably already seen that other code, 
you must be very careful not to write code that looks like it.

There are some fairly well-known open source projects out there who 
work with dual licensing; visit their websites and see how they 
handle things. Off the top of my head (things may have changed since 
then): ghostscript, mySQL, Qt. IIRC, ghostscript for instance works 
with a system in which the GPL version of their software is allways 
one or two major versions behind the commercial version. 

BTW, IANAL.

-- 
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl