Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

> RMS on the CC licenses (about halfway down the page):
>
> http://www.linuxp2p.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10771

:Some Creative Commons licenses are free licenses; most permit at least
:noncommercial verbatim copying. But some, such as the Sampling Licenses
:and Developing Countries Licenses, don't even permit that, which makes
:them unacceptable to use for any kind of work. All these licenses have in
:common is a label, but people regularly mistake that common label for
:something substantial.

:I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons
:as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable. It would be
:self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons
:licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any
:endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find
:myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.

If I'm reading that correctly, because some people will misconstrue a
partial endorsement as a full endorsement, RMS finds it self delusional to
give CC a partial endorsement. I think that's a "baby with the bath water"
argument. Or, to put in another way, RMS is saying because some people
can't tell the difference between "some", "none", and "all", RMS decided
rather than have "some" be misconstrued as "all", he decided to endorse
"none", even though he (in theory) supports "some".

Which, in effect, is saying it is better to misrepresent your political
position than to have your audience misunderstand what you are saying.

Hey, here's a nutty idea, how about EDUCATE your audience, rather than
taking a moronic position in an effort to prevent morons from
misinterpreting you? Some CC licenses are free, but RMS can't endorse them
because some idiot might take that the wrong way? Wow. I'm underwhelmed.

Not that I wholeheartedly endorse CC either, but I don't dumb down my
opinion because I'm afraid someone might take it the wrong way.

Greg

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