Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

How did we get from me saying this:
( https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2004-December/001412.html )
>I just haven't seen a CC project that was big enough to require
>source, prohibit patents, etc, etc, that are the sort of overly
>restrictive license options needed for a big, massive, long-term
>project to survive.

to you arguing this situation:
Evan Prodromou said:
> Consider: Alice makes Free Software, releases it, and forgets about it.
> Two years later, Bob finds it on a FTP server, likes it, modifies it,
> and starts maintaining it. It's a boon for the world. Alice and Bob
> don't have to share a CVS repository for their collaboration to occur.


Alice didn't NEED share-alike, source requirements, patent exclusions,
DRM exclusions, to create her work in the first place.

If it's something she does as a one-off, she does alone, and her
end-result is a self-contained work, then she could just as easily
release it under CC-PD and be done with it. If she wants to make
her work as widely available as possible, Public Domain is the
way to go.

She doesn't NEED an alphabet soup license to protect her project
if it is as simplistice and self-contained as you say.

what I >SAID< was that I haven't seen a project that NEEDS
the full license armor to protect the project while it is
in progress. You're example is NOT a project that NEEDS it.

Now, it could be that there is an implied "project" going on
under the vague heading of "Culture", but that's basically
design by evolution, releasing odd bits into the wild under
an overly-protective license under the hopes that someone
will pull it into a larger, not-yet-existing, project.

But even then, you didn't NEED the alphabet soup to do your
individual bit, your release into the wild.

In a best case interpretation, it would be like Richard Stallman
releasing GCC without a vision of how it fits into the
grand scheme of a vision for a complete operating system
with full suite of appliations. But he keeps it GNU-GPL
because in his gut he thinks someone will morph it into
something big.

Which only proves my point. I haven't SEEN a CC project
that requires alphabet soup protection. Releasing a
random bit of code, and crossing your fingers that it
will become part of some bigger, but yet unnamed, project
IS NOT A PROJECT. Using the term "Culture" to hide the
fact that it is NOT a project doesn't cut it.

If something fits under the heading of Culture, that
means it has to affect an audience far greater than
just the Creative Commons community of users and pundits.

I'll give you that wikitravel is such a project that
needs good protection, but I think it's sufficiently
focused on text that it could just as easily have used
GNU-FDL. The same goes for wikinews, though it might
turn into a more multimedia experience that goes beyond
just text and pictures and independent stories.

The projects that use CC-SA and need that sort of protection
could probably be licensed under GNU-FDL.

Opsound is probably one of the biggest projects that really can't
fit under GNU-FDL because its all music. But back wehn I checked
opsound out, it was a collection of mp3's. No source, no midi,
no transparency.  I'd say this is because stuff like MUSIC doesn't
segment easily. The amount of work to create a song is probably
on par with a movie short. its small enough that a small team
can pull it off in a short amount of time. But Opsound works
because it's like Wikipedia for music. Individuals can write a
single song/article and leave the rest for someone else.

Music segments easily into songs, so artists and bands record
songs, and the Opsound Aggregates them as independent chunks.

Wikipedia is an aggregation of relatively small and independent
articles. Wikitravel is too. Wikinews has a shot of working
because it can be an aggregation of small, independently created
news stories.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Every example of a successful, massive, long-term CC project has
been basically a massive aggregation project, aggregating small works
that don't segment easily into smaller chunks.
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But massive aggregation is not the same as massive dervation,
building upon the various components to build something that
is a synergy, something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Opsound is a collection of music. Every song added to the aggregation
will increase the "value" of Opsound by 1. Wikipedia is a collection
of articles. every article added increases the value by 1.

If you take a compiler, and an editor, you could then do something
totally out of the box like use those two pieces to create a Kernel,
and suddenly those three components together have a value far greater
than 3.

opsound doesn't need source code requirements because it is basically
an aggregation of independently created songs. opsound doesn't need
share-alike, it could just as easily use CC-BY, because there is no
massive chain of derivations going on.

Wikitravel needs it, but it could probably fit under GNU-FDL becaue
its mostly text and images.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
I know of no multimedia projects that NEED CC-SA with transparency
requirements, patent exclusions, DRM exclusions, and the list of
restrictions needed to protect and allow massive derivations,
because the projects I've seen so far are getting their value by
aggregation, not derivation.
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