Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Wednesday 20 July 2005 01:54 am, Takemoto wrote:
> Dear Mike Linksvayer,
>
> I accept that it is not clear that the right licence played a role in the
> proliferation of open source software.
>
> I am arguing that the GPL did. I am not sure of the differences between it
> and the other licences, but I feel that there are bigger, crucial
> differences between them and the application of the CC licence to text
> media.
>
> Perhaps as you and other poster's suggest, the use of creative commons
> licences has not yet reached a critical mass, or that there are
> insufficient 'networking effects' (I am not sure what these might be).
>
> But as explained in a previous post it seems clear that there are major
> differences between text and software since software is not something
> that one wants to download from anyone other than the creator(s) whereas
> text is often preffered in a offline form.
>
> 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).

This thought may hold true until your Free Software (<grin>) gets included in 
a distribution. After that, most people will get your software in the install 
ot when people do aptitude install (apt-get install) packagefoo.
>
> 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.

If you looking to make direct profit and if you are content to create your 
works from scratch, perhaps. I however like to do a lot of my work as "play" 
upon existing works. I basically have to do these purely for my own 
enjoyment. Now, when that pool I mentioned in my earlier post gets big 
enough, I may find things in it to play with and others will get to see and 
perhaps enjoy my derivatives.

Also, I am doing a lot of what I do in these areas these days by way of 
thanks 
for what I have already received from those creating copyleft and other Free 
works. If I can find a way to make a direct profit while doing so, all the 
better, but it is not my primary motivation.

>
> 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.

Anyone is free to try pretty much anything, but some of the things that can 
be 
tried will result in works that are not Free in the GPL sense. I don't expect 
to play with such works very much, or spend much of my effort promoting such 
works to my friends, etc.
>
> Tim
>
> Timothy Takemoto

all the best,

drew

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