Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Glenn Otis Brown said:
>
> On Feb 1, 2005, at 10:29 AM, Greg London wrote:
>
>> See, you're all making it far too complicated.
>> Here is the simple logical argument in 4 easy steps.
>>
>> (1) GPL asserts it is "free as in free speech, not free beer"
>> (2) Free speech allows individuals to create proprietary works.
>> (3) GNU-GPL does not allow proprietary works.
>
> depends on what you mean by "proprietary." it certainly allows someone
> to own a copyright in some code, and to sell that code. that's
> certainly property, even if it is property that carries special
> freedoms and conditions. your lawn is no less "proprietary" for having
> a sidewalk (a public easement akin to a license) run through it.
>

Free speech lets me create and distribute proprietary forks of someone
else's BSD code. You can't create and distribute proprietary forks
of someone else's copyleft code.

Copyleft isn't free as in free speech.
It is community-centric.
Individuals are not allowed to make proprietary forks
of someone else's copyleft code.
Individual rights are restricted to the point that
no individual can take anything from the community.

Free speech allows individuals to take from the community and create
proprietary forks.

copyleft does not allow that.

copyleft is not nearly as "free" as "free speech".

copyleft is an extremely limited subset of free speech.
free speech is a superset of rights that includes copyleft
and many rights that copyleft does not allow
(all rights reserved, creative commons spectrum, BSD)

Since free speech is a superset including copyleft,
there are something things that you can do in
free speech that are allowed in copyleft.
the sets do overlap in some area.

But the crux of the argument is that there are things
you CAN do in free speech that you can NOT do in copyleft.

While Free Speech is guaranteed in the first amendment by
telling the government what they cannot do to the individual,

copyleft tells the individual what they can not do to the community.

The first amendment places the importance of the individual above the state.
copyleft places the importance of the community above the individual.

copyleft isn't about "free as in free speech".
It is about creating a community and protecting it
from individuals who would otherwise create proprietary forks.
And it does this by restricting individuals.





>>
>> therefore
>>
>> (4) GNU-GPL is not free as in free speech.
>>
>> Unless someone can point to a logical fallacy in one of
>> those four steps, the argument stands.
>>
>> for reference, logical fallacies are listed here:
>> http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
>>
>> Greg
>>
>>
>> --
>> Hungry for a good read? Crave science fiction?
>> Get a taste of "Hunger Pangs" by Greg London.
>> http://www.greglondon.com/hunger/
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>>
>
> Glenn Otis Brown
> Executive Director
> Creative Commons
> glenn AT creativecommons.org
> +1.415.946.3065 (telephone)
> +1.415.336.1433 (mobile)
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-- 
Hungry for a good read? Crave science fiction?
Get a taste of "Hunger Pangs" by Greg London.
http://www.greglondon.com/hunger/