Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam AT codegnome.org>]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 12:43:49AM -0500, Greg London wrote:

> Does the ShareAlike addon gain anything?  Or is it the reflection of a
> lack of understanding of the licenses by users? Do people get caught

Sure it does. SA means that someone downstream can't change the terms of
the license by making it either more free or more restrictive. SA is a
good choice when the content owner wants to ensure that the terms of
derivatives can't be modified.

> up in the idea of "Sharing" their content and so they add ShareAlike
> even when it doesn't make sense when you've got NonCommercial in front
> of it?

I don't see why you think "sharing" should equal "commercial." BY-NC-SA
means "do what you like with my work, so long as you don't make money on
it." It's a way to reserve monetary potential for the original creator,
while still releasing the content into the commons for personal uses or
community-based improvements.

Personally, I think BY-NC-SA is the most likely license to gain
widespread acceptance for textual works, and it looks like the pie chart
currently bears that out. Remember, the copyright owner can always
release a work under a more open license in the future, but can never
put the genie back in the bottle. There's nothing wrong with reserving
rights; BY-NC-SA strikes a nice balance, IMHO.

Still, as time goes on, I'd be surprised if older works with no
commercial potential aren't eventually re-released under other licenses.
Even if they aren't, the commons is still enriched.

-- 
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