Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Tuesday 29 November 2005 12:27 am, phyllostachys nuda wrote:
>     Sorry, I went overboard, that flaming was not right.

Correct.

However, you are still exhibiting signs of trolling in that you are not 
answering the specific questions put to you in a specific fashion. Rather, 
you are restating your position in broad generalities.

I suggest if you want this to continues that you go back and answer some of 
the issues put to you specifically.
>
>   Yes, there would be a list of 'prohibited uses' in this license. Just
> like the GPL has a gigantic list of things you can and can't do with it.
> It's just a list. I listed some of the political agreements on ethics in my
> last message; the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution, etc, which
> guarantee everyone certain fundamental rights. It is not impossible nor
> even improbable for diverse groups of people to agree on specifically
> defined ethical standards and laws; that's what society is.
>
>   Some people think the GPL is not very 'free', because it has these
> restrictions. Some corporations and organizations ban using any GPL code
> because they feel it is not 'free enough'. They are afraid of the GPL; they
> think it will wind up to be 'too restrictive' for them, or open them up to
> lawsuits, force them to open their code, etc etc etc.
>
>   But if everyone had worried about whether the GPL or BSD license would be
> 'popular' then they would have never been written in the first place. The
> same can be said of Linux and most other free software. Popularity
> shouldn't be prejudged too harshly. The license should exist, and be easy
> to use (best thing about Creative Commons), and it should be up to ordinary
> people to decide if they want to use it or not.
>
>   As for MONGO, I tried to look it up. The last version I could find was
> from 1998 and had no license at all that I could find, not that I went
> through all the .tex files looking for one. In the early 1990s apparently
> it required you to pay for it. I tried to look up Chaco. I can't find
> anything about its reason for being created. Apparently the license
> historians have been a little lax.
>
>   Now as to the question of how it would fragment because people disagree
> about various ethical arguments; surely, it would. But what of the dozens
> of different 'open source' and other free licenses that exist in the world.
> It's the marketplace of ideas.
>
>   But there are some standards that the vast majority of the world agrees
> on. Things like torturing POWs or slavery. If those things alone were in
> the license that would be a start.
>
>   But why computer software? Becuase of the context. Computer software is
> written by upper class people who have pretty decent lots in life compared
> to the vast majority of people. They are in a special social and economic
> position and perhaps they can use this position to do something about the
> injustices of the world.
>
>   Second, because computer software has been developed and used to a large
> degree by many forces that support injustice in the world, with nary a
> whimper from the 'computer community'. This goes back at least to IBM and
> the Nazis, Apartheid South Africa, the various Nuclear weapons programs,
> the Vietnam war with its cadres of systems engineers plotting equations of
> victory while millions died on the ground, to our modern day Great Firewall
> of China, built with the help of Cisco, which allows the government to
> murder people for speaking their mind. Computer science has a lot to answer
> for, and this is a chance to do it.
>
>   Third because computer technology, in combination with nanotech, and
> biotech, has the potential to be massively more destructive to life than
> nuclear technology could ever be. The next generation of weapons will not
> be about large explosions. It will be about subtle trickery of the fabric
> of the ecosystem. It will be about viruses, mind control, surveillance,
> swarms of tiny 'smart weapons' that perhaps we cannot even see. I am sure
> some body will say 'the authorities will never create such weapons', but
> please read some history books about the biological, chemical, and nuclear
> weapons programs created by Japan, the USSR, Germany, the US, and many
> other countries. Then I ask you, what exactly has changed since those days?
> Are we somehow magically evolved to the point where we carefully think
> through things before we do it, or do we simply do it because 'its there'
> or 'we are getting payed to' or 'its our job'?
>
>   Thank you.

all the best,

drew

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