Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>:

> drew Roberts wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday 28 March 2006 12:00 am, Greg London wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Linux started out with some political motivation
> > > of "Putting Microsoft out of business", but for
> > > it to survive in the long run, thankfully the
> > > GNU-GPL license was chosen, so that when the
> > > political motivation went away, the project was still
> > > empowered to succeed as as possible.
> > where are you getting this history of Linux from?
>
> Don't know, but it's pretty clearly false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#History

Linux, the kernel, started as a student hack, and Torvalds to this day 
opposes anything he regards as politics.

The GPL *is* regarded as a political tool by some, and as can be seen from the
current GPL 3.0 draft debates, the politics have not gone away. But Linus
simply seems to regard the GPL as the least worst "open source" license and
describes its effects in terms of quid pro quo rather than of Freedom.

This makes presenting the *origins* of Linux as ideological or economic
radicalism very difficult. Torvalds's biography is called "Just For Fun". The
reception and use of Linux may be a different matter, and the environment in
which Linux could happen was created by the politics of the GNU project, but
the Linux kernel really was just a hack to start with.

- Rob.