Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

drew Roberts said:
> On Monday 07 March 2005 06:51 am, Greg London wrote:
>> Just keeping track of all the contributers becomes a hassle,
>> and extra burden above and beyond the burden of trying to
>> get a new project going. And unless who also track who
>> contributed what, you simply accumulate a list of all authors,
>> whether their contribution actually made it to the final
>> version or not.
>
> You are addressing why attributin must not be required,
> not why it should be forbidden.

I'm not attached to whether it is "not required" or
whether it is "forbidden". I think a large project
has to set itself up so that contributions are made
where attribution is waived. But if it is simply
waived, that means that someone else could take the
result of that project while it is still going,
make a minor fork, and put attribution on it with their
name and URL.

Then a bunch of people on the project will start clamoring
to get THEIR attribution too, at which point the project
comes to a halt while the organizer tries to explain the
overhead that would come with keeping track of all the
attribution. Depending on how the conversation goes, if
it goes badly, the project could get severely injured
as people get upset, leave, and whatnot, all because
attribution was waived but not forbidden.

If you can forbid it from the beginning, you avoid
that whole mess.

What you don't want to do is restrict some right
for the contributers for the project but allow
downstream people be able to do something the
contributers couldn't do on the project itself.

That will only give incentive for the contibuters
to want to do their own version of teh project where
they are NOT restricted, which splinters the project.

It becomes a prisoner's dilema, so no one cooperates.

So, if a large project can only work if the contributers
waive attribution, then to make it so that people
who are NOT on the project suddenly have an advantage
over people who ARE, you have to forbid attribution.

The solution to the prisoner's dilema is to remove the
incentive to work against the project. Then cooperation
is encouraged, and the project becomes the natural solution
for people looking to contribute.

Whicih isn't to say someone couldn't take the project's
work adn put their name on it. It just means that it
isn't "Attribution" in teh sense that the name/URL
HAS to stay with the work. Even if attribution is
forbidden, you could still put your name on it and
say "I contributed to this". But downstream people
are not required to keep your name.