Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Jonathon Blake" <jonathon.blake AT gmail.com>]

Nancy wrote:

> I think, so why could we not use NC texts?

a) NC prohibits commercial usage.  Your project has a commercial
component to it.

b) There is _nothing_ preventing you from contacting NC (or ND)
authors, and asking for permission to include their material.

Looking at the http://americannationalcorpus.org/native-speaker.html,
you will have to individually contact, and confirm that the individual
is a native American English speaker, before their work can be
accepted.  Which means that the step of requesting permission, and
verifying that they are "native American English" speakers" can be
combined into one step.   [A bot could easily handle both the initial
request, and questions that come as responses.]

> Finally, thanks for the suggestions on getting permissions. When we have the 
> time and money to do something like that we may try it, as these are all good 
> ideas.

If you haven't got the time/money to request permission, you do not
have the time/money to verify that contributors are "native American
English" speakers.  [Which means that you do not have the time/money
to do the proposed project.]

You can not assume that projects like Wikipedia (English) are
contributions by Native American English speakers.  (I can point to at
least half a dozen articles, where none of the contributors are
"native American English" speakers.  Neither can it be assumed that
because the  IP Address points to a US POP, that the wikipedia
contributor is a native American English speaker. Their first language
might be Spanish, or Canadian English, or any of the 6000 odd
languages that are currently spoken. ]

Nor can you assume that software documentation projects are written by
native American English speakers.  [The majority of contributors to
OpenOffice.org documentation are not native American English
speakers.(I don't think that anybody at OOoAuthors.org is a native
American English speaker, as the term is defined on your project
website.)]

> licenses are consistent with CC's, especially the Commercial License 
> Agreement, so I'd like to get a grip on that issue first.

The only way to have the NC licence congruent with your project, is to
make your project NC.  [Whilst the NC was not deliberately designed to
be incompatible with everything else, that is one of its side
effects.]

xan

jonathon
--
Ethical conduct is a vice.
Corrupt conduct is a virtue.

Motto of Nacarima.