Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Rob Myers said:
> On 6 Mar 2005, at 04:12, Greg London wrote:
>> I'd be fine with something like "CC-NC-FAN".
>> Or "FC" for Fan Club, or whatever.
>> At least it would be an honest description.
>
> The licenses are modular. SA just means the other terms of the license
> must be re-applied to derived works. I don't think this is any kind of
> misrepresentation.

But the name "ShareAlike" has natural connotations
that conflict with how NC-SA really works.
It is yet another "free as in free speech not free beer"
problem. Rather than exacerbate the problem, CC could
choose a name that actually fits what NC-SA does.

Rather than having people go,
"Ooh, look free steak knives. Wait, no, not really."
how about use a name that doesn't have natural
connotations that conflict with reality?

"Ooh, share and share alike. Wait, no, not really"
"Oooh, Free Software. Wait, no, not really."

Do we really want to create yet another double-meaning
for words used to describe licenses?

"ShareAlike actually means share and share alike for
everyone but the original author. Unless ShareAlike
is used with no other license restrictiosn, then
it really means Share and Share Alike."


I guess we'd rather use "free" and "share" and other hip
and cool words even if we have to put footnotes
at the bottom to describe what they really mean.

"This work licensed CC-BY-NC-ShareAlike*"

(* by "ShareAlike", I mean everyone but me, the author.)