Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

David Christie said:
> But back up to the bit about the
> number of downstream generations being one. Isn't that pretty typical of
> successful open source projects? How many downstream generations does Linux
> have? Isn't Torvalds still in charge, so to speak, at least of the main
> fork?

I wouldn't use the phrase "in charge",
I'd use the term "grandfather".
I don't know the numbers, but I'd guess that
tens of thousands of poeple have contributed to Linux.
each contribution becomes a "generation".
Every contributer benefits equally from the overall result.
They donate some of their time and energy and that accumulates
in the overall Linux project, that everyone benefits from equally.

Now, turn back the clock and have Linus put his kernel under
a share-revenue license. Anyone who contributes to Linux
now creates a work that Linus benefits from more than any
other contributer because he was the first contributer.

It suddenly changes from a sea of contributers who benefit
equally from any improvement they make, to some sort of
"pyramid scheme" where Linus benefits more and more for
every contribution that SOMEONE ELSE makes.

say Linus's work by itself wasn't commecially viable.
If a thousand poeple contribute to the project and
get it to the point of being commercially viable,
then Linus benefits from that more than the other
contributers.

The key factor I think you're missing is that Linux and
other open source projects are "gift economies".
They exist solely out of the contributions of others.
The flow is FROM the contributer to the project.

Any project where the overall flow is TO the contributer
is a "market economy". and it doesn't matter if "share"
is in the name of the license or not. CC-SA-NC is a
market economy license. The original creator witholds
enough rights to the work that if someone wants to
use the work commercially, the benefit flows TO the
creator when they sell a commercial license to someone.

You will not see thousands of contributers to a market
economy license, and your share-revenue is a market
economy license.

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