Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Branko Collin said:
> On 18 Feb 2005, at 12:46, mp wrote:
>> On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 22:47, Jesse Roberge wrote:
>
>> > GPL prohibits sales / direct profit making (members-only, etc.)
>>
>> does it? how?

> So although the GPL does not forbid profit making (profit can be a
> great incentive to do something, even distributing works), it does
> more or less prevent it.

That's somewhat loose language being applied, though.
The GPL grants the right to anyone to distribute copies
of the work for money.

It doesn't prohibit sales. It doesn't prohibit profit-making.
It doesn't prevent it. The license specifically grants that
right to anyone.

A license that retains the right to commercial sales to teh
author would be CC-NonCommercial or AllRightsReserved.
Those licenses retain teh right and so prohibit and prevent
profit making.

Because the GPL grants the right to sell a work to everyone,
it prevents anyone having exclusive commercial rights and
so competition becomes fierce, and the work becomes a commodity,
a commonly shared idea or concept, where no monopoly is possible.

That does not prevent sales or profit making, however.
The language of the license specifically grants that right to
anyone.

It just means that you've got to work for your profit and sales.
CompactDisc players are a commodity market. They are all functionally
the same now. No manufacturer has anything in their CD player
design that differentiates them from any other player.
Burners used to differentiate themselves by being faster burn rates,
but they've topped out at 52x or so because any faster and the
discs spin so fast that they break apart.

But companies still sell CD players and burners make a profit.

The world if full of commoditized works that still make people money.