Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Monday 07 March 2005 08:32 am, Greg London wrote:
> 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.

No, at least in the case I gave, they could not, since it is ShareAlike, they 
cannot make changes to the license at all. At least if I understand the 
implications of ShareAlike correctly.

Well, perhaps what you said, but for it to actually be a problem, they would 
also have to require this attribution of others, which they could not do as I 
stated above.

Please note, I am speaking of license I think should exist, not those that 
currently exist.
>
> 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.
>
We are using different terms.

I will try again using terms that may suit you better:

BY-SA (Attribution)
SA (down stream is free to name the upstream author, and so on, but not 
required to do so.
NOBY-SA (author does not put his name to the work, downstream cannot name 
author or put his own name to the work, and so on.)

Theses are three seperate choices I am proposing. Currently we have one of 
the 
three BY-SA under 2.x and two of the three BY-SA and SA under 1.x IIRC. I 
have never seen the third even discussed by anyone else.

all the best,

drew

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