Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Thursday 24 March 2005 05:47 pm, Peter Brink wrote:
> Greg London skrev:
> > There are a number of Public Domain style licenses which are also
> > open source and are simple grants of copyright by the author to
> > anyone. The BSD style licenses simply release rights without any
> > contractual agreements.
>
> When two people agree upon something that agreement is a legally
> speaking a contract. No open source license is anything else but a
> contract.
>
> > Second of all, even the most restrictive open source license,
> > GNU-GPL, can be viewed as a grant of rather specific and detailed
> > set of rights by the author to whoever wants them. The rights
> > granted are a subset of copyright rights. to quote the GNU-GPL:
> >
> > "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
> >  covered by this License"
> >
> > An author granting the right for anyone to distribute the original
> > work as long as the author's name is highlighted in red is still
> > a function of copyright alone. a subset of the right to distribute
> > is granted by the author.
> >
> > None of the rights granted by the GPL are conditional, which would
> > require an agreement from the downstream person. all the rights
> > are granted with a detailed list of where the right ends and
> > kept by the author.
>
> A contract is a deed where someone is offering a grant to someone else.
> The grant need not be onerous, it can be beneficial, that is the offer
> need not have an condition. All open source licenses contain an offer,
> which is granted provided that the user agrees to the terms of the
> contract. Thus all open source licenses have at least one condition -
> that the user agrees to follow the terms of the contract.

In the US, I believe a contract needs consideration also. Where is the 
consideration here?

One reason I keep referring to US law, is that I did take a Business Law 
course in college sometime back in the late 70s/early 80s. So, despite my 
knowledge of US law being hazy and out of date, I probabaly know more about 
US business law than the same field in my won country.

Also, nost of the legal copyleft (GPL) discussion I end up reading seem to 
have a US slant.

all the best,

drew