Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Tuesday 07 March 2006 04:48 pm, Terry Hancock wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 March 2006 02:05 pm, Brian Erdelyi wrote:
> > As you pointed out, I am trying to *document* or
>
> *describe* existing end user license agreements
>
> > Once in a system readable format (RDF/XML) there can be
>
> additional tools developed to notify, warn and advise users
> about the license.
>
> Okay, I understand.
> So a better question is probably "How do I extend the CC
> RDF/XML format to allow automatic license terms
> determination of non-CC licenses, like EULAs, etc"
>
> > So, it seems I should be focusing on the meta-data schema
>
> and a CC-like deed.
>
> That sounds right to me.  The actual "license" is a legal
> document -- and you don't need or want to write that, since
> you're talking about existing ones that you want to
> classify.
>
> > How is the CC meta-data extended to describe these
>
> additional characteristics of existing software?
>
> Regrettably I haven't tried out the automatic licensing
> analysis stuff -- it sounds cool, but I don't think I can
> answer the question.  But maybe we'll get an answer to
> the "better question". I'm interested too. :-)
>
> One caveat that jumps out at me is that the CC licenses
> are explicitly designed to be easy to manage in this way,
> whereas the licenses you are likely to be facing are
> complex and often (apparently) intentionally deceptive.

I too think that regular EULAs are often (always?) complex and I also tend to 
think that some are purposefully deceptive.

One approach might be to develop this as a questioneer/template to send to 
software houses and ask them to classify their own EULAs. Ask them to include 
the summary as a binding part of the EULA's stating the intention of the more 
complex EULA language?

Some may agree, some may not, but if a potential user knew that a software 
house had refused to self classify, they could take that info into account.
>
> So your classification system is likely to have
> imperfections and misfits.  That will reduce its value
> compared to the CC tools used with CC licenses.
>
> I think your biggest problem is you personally deciding
> which characteristics to model, more than figuring out
> how to encode the model (you probably can figure out
> the latter just by looking at the example data from CC).
>
> Cheers,
> Terry
>
> --
> Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
> Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com

all the best,

drew
-- 
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