Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 20 Jul 2005, at 06:54, Takemoto wrote:

> Hence if someone opensources their software then people will keep
> coming back to their site to download later versions, and hopefully
> make donations, and contributions, or order work (especially if the
> name of the software is copyright).

But software projects fork, meaning that the original project won't  
get those advantages. "Copyrighting" (trademarking?) the project's  
name won't affect this.

> However in the case of a book, people may not keep coming back to
> the site of the creator if there are others that have published the  
> book.

But another author cannot be the same author. If I like Steven King,  
I will want to download more Steven King books (and write fan  
fiction) rather than re-download the same books from a different site.

> You think that it is not something about the software-licence match,
> and that it is more a question of time. I think that there are  
> important
> reasons why software is more appropriate to open sourcing. I am not
> sure whether the same kind of success can be achieved in other
> media but making licences for text that approach the GPL ("no binding"
> is my suggestion) seems like a good thing to try.

Software is text. Lots of music is open sourced. The lack of free  
literature (NC isn't free) is puzzling, and is presumably cultural or  
contractual.

The license that approaches GPL is CC-BY-SA. That match is there. A  
medium-specific license such as no-binding can easily be subverted  
(print the book on loose sheets and distribute it with a pre-glued  
cover), will be made irrelevant by advances in technology (ebooks)  
and prevents cultural re-use (turning a book into a play).

- Rob