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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Advertising issues

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Advertising issues
  • Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:19:14 -0600

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:07:26 +0100
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <christian AT fluendo.com>
wrote:
> My point is that the border for where commercial activity
> starts is so blurry that it makes the content useless for
> anyone who actually starts thinking about the issue. The
> GPL have an equally stupid clause which allows non-free
> 'system libraries'. Problem is there is no clear
> definition of what that is.

Actually, that's an important special exemption -- it allows
you to use Gnu software on commercial proprietary Unix
platforms and on Windows. Otherwise, almost nothing would
run on those systems without breaking the license.

It's less and less important, though, as more and more
people are using free OSs to run Gnu software -- but you
have to remember that there were NO free OSs when the GPL
(v2) was drafted.

So I'd argue that in this case, it does more good than harm
-- a broad interpretation is probably, if anything, the
desireable result (can't use any non-free libraries), while
the language gives enough wiggle room for the cases where it
was really needed.

The "non-commercial" clause, on the other hand, restricts
all kinds of stuff that the authors (probably) didn't really
want or imagine that they were restricting. Unless there is
a very specific definition provided for "commercial use",
then it's just too broad.

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com





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