Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

> Terry Hancock wrote:
> Friend Phil has just replied to me off-list to say,
> basically, 'yes he did'

My posts on this thread consist of the following:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2006-June/003754.html
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2006-June/003755.html
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2006-June/003765.html
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2006-June/003769.html

I've read through them all just now and none of them
say anything about Phil's character.

All my comments were of the variety "if you want to do X,
then you'll need to do Y" or "If you do A, then that
allows you to do B down the road". The only directed comments
were "don't kid yourself that this (CC-ND) is Free", which
I stand by. CC-ND doesn't have anything to do with freedom,
though it may be used to make the work free/zero cost.

> he also asserted that the case for
> free-copyleft versus proprietary-assignment was not proven.

Well, if a single author wishes to use All Rights Reserved
as a way to do what he thinks is best for the work, that's
his choice. If Phil wishes to use All Rights Reserved on
his work, that's his choice. If he wishes to have contributers
assign copyright to their labor to him, that is also his
choice to make that demand, and it's the contributers's choice
to accept or reject that demand. And if Phil is fine with
the response his demand gets, that's his choice as well too.
It's his work, it's his perogative, it's his license.
He can do whatever he wants.

But if he wants to bandy about the term "freedom" and "sharing"
just because he put a CC-ND license on the work, and say as
much in a public space, then I'll point out just how out to
lunch his vocabulary is. If he calls that an attack on his
character, then I'll call him Humpty Dumpty, just so that
I can actually be guilty of the thing I'm being accused of
and still be true. Freedom and Sharing have specific meanings
in the FLOSS community and for someone to come in and tell
me that they're going to Share a work and protect its freedom
by using CC-ND, there is misuse of vocabulary that needs
be pointed out. A word doesn't mean exactly what Phil wants
it to mean here. Freedom and Sharing have been defined by
the FLOSS community to have specific meanings.

> It's such an obvious point, but there really ought to be a paper on
> it somewhere.

It isn't on paper most likely because this is a problem of
misusing vocabulary. Free and Sharing have specific meanings
and Phil wants to redefine them to mean something else.

The thing is that Phil may very well be intent on doing
what's best for the work, even to his own detriment.
CC-ND with a contributer agreement assigning rights
to the contributions to Phil may very well end up
be good for his project.

The problem is that Phil seems to focused on himself
and his project, and he knows that he intends to do
what is best for his project, I am looking at it from
a system's point of view.

Bill Gates tells me he's got this great project and
he wants to make sure all additions to the project
are shared amongst everyone, so he puts the project
under CC-ND and then requires all contributers assign
copyright to him.

That system requires trusting Phil or trusting Bill
to do the right thing for the project to succeed.

On the other hand, if Bill Gates started some project
and put the work under GNU-GPL or CC-SA, then the
system is automatically safe because trust isn't
required for it to succeed. I talk about this a bit
in Bounty Hunters when I talk about cake-cutting
algorithms and how some algorithms are stable
and some are not.

http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/bountyhunters.htm#1_3_Cake_Cutting

Alice and Bob want to cut a cake evenly.
They get Trustworthy Trent to do the honors.
But the problem is Trent can become biased
for one reason or another.

On the other hand, the simple algorithm of
having Alice cut the cake into two pieces,
and letting Bob choose which piece he gets,
works regardless of Alice's or Bob's or even
Trent's intents.

Phil's approach requires that people trust Phil
to do the right thing. For his project, that may
be fine. But from outside potential contributers,
who know nothing of Phil, who don't know if he's
a Bill Gates or a Lawful Good Paladin, their decision
to contribute to a system that requires trusting
Phil will be tempered by the fact that they don't
know him enough to know if he is trustable.

If this sort of system worked, then Phil could
just as well release the works All Rights Reserved
and say "trust me", and get contributions.
But most contributers won't know Phil, so they
won't know if they can trust him to do what's best
for the work, rather than what's best for Phil,
and may be disinclined to contribute.

Using a CC-SA or GNU-GPl license changes the system
so that trust isn't required. The license commits
everyone to certain rules and so one person cannot
hold themselves at an advantage above the community.

>From a system's design, it's far more stable than
requiring trust in an unknown individual.

It has nothing to do with whether or not Phil can
be trusted. From the point of view of designing the
system, a system that doesn't require Trustworthy
Trent to "do the right thing" is a stable system,
it will produce good results even if the individuals
are mean, nasty, double-crossing backstabbers, and even
if they are Lawful Good Paladins.

A system that requires Trent only produces good results
if the person fulfilling the role of Trent is a Lawful
Good Paladin, AND if everyone knows that person well enough
to know that he is a Lawful Good Paladin.

So, a paper about it (of sorts) has been written....

Greg

-- 
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/