Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Wednesday 29 March 2006 08:52 am, Greg London wrote:
> Pure copyleft, such as GNU-GPL or CC-SA, are the ideal
> license for a gift-economy project, in that these
> licenses give the project the best chances for success.

Greg, I may have been the one who put the question that sidetracked the 
thread.

It is just that not being careful with you examples can lead people who find 
mistakes in them to discount the other things you have to say. Also, people 
have seen so much fud thrown around in this area that they are less likely to 
let incorrect history pass as fact.

Now, you will get no argument from me that a pure copyleft licence is the 
best 
licence, and for my money, not just for what you call gift economy projects.

I have never fully bought into the gift economy explanation even from years 
ago when ESR was putting forth the idea (he is the first person I know who 
put it forth in relation to Free Software and the GPL, I don't know if he 
originated the thought in that context) as I have never found it to match up 
with my motivations and thinking. However, if it helps people to get a graps 
on how and why the copyleft licences can work, I am not one to make a big 
deal of that issue.

> It prevents proprietary forking, and it prevents
> a commercial forks of the project from competing with
> the original gift-economy version of the project.

If I understand you correctly, I do take issue with this though. One of the 
key features of the GPL is that it does indeed allow for forks of the 
project, commercial or volunteer driven, it just requires what it requires. 
Given what it requires though, the original project can take back and 
incorporate the improvements made by the fork. So, it does discourage 
"unnecesary" forking. I think. Which is a good thing. I think.

all the best,

drew
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