Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

This is a community discussion. Everyone on there?

On 24 Mar 2005, at 22:47, Peter Brink wrote:

> When two people agree upon something that agreement is a legally 
> speaking a contract. No open source license is anything else but a 
> contract.

American law disagrees with you:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031214210634851

"A license like the GPL, on the other hand, which is a true license by 
intent, and which, if you remember the original definition, is a 
permission to do what otherwise you could not legally do, fits the 
definition of license precisely."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

"Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain 
within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, 
but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the 
license permits."

Other jurisdictions may well differ.

> the fact that there is room for creativity when writing source code 
> doesn't mean that such possibilities are used. Functions, procedures 
> and methods run a real risk of not being copyrightable, simply because 
> they do tend to contain expressions which are purely functional.

Code (program listings) is a form of writing, that is what makes it 
copyrightable.

- Rob.

--
http://www.robmyers.org/art -  All my art, Creative Commons Licensed.
http://www.robmyers.orgt/weblog - Free Culture and Generative Art blog.