Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 23 Jun 2006, at 22:46, Terry Hancock wrote:

> Terry Hancock wrote:
> >  White, Phil wrote:
> > > This is the second time you have besmirched my character.
> >
> >  Greg has said nothing to indicate that you *would* do this. The  
> > point
> >  is that you legally *could*
>
> Friend Phil has just replied to me off-list to say, basically, 'yes  
> he did'
> (if he wants a more accurate portrayal, he can post here, IMHO).

I really don't think Greg did. He is explaining how projects *in  
general* look to people who may be contributors, and how to make sure  
these potential contributors feel they have enough of a contract with  
the project that they can contribute without feeling that they might  
ever be exploited. He is not saying anything about *this project's  
leader* specifically.

> I won't quote that in the interests of protecting the guilty, but  
> he also
> asserted that the case for free-copyleft versus proprietary-assignment
> was not proven.

The FSF take copyright assignment but they license their assignments  
under a copyleft license. They put the case for copyleft as an  
ethical one, but if we believe Eric Raymond then the case has been  
proven in terms of efficiency.

> The obvious counterexamples are H2G2 vs Wikipedia and
> 'shared source' or 'community source' and free-licensed open-source
> software.

Within Free Software if we compare Linux and Copland, or IIS and  
Apache, again we see ethical and efficiency wins.

But then there are "gated community" projects like myspace, youtube  
and Geocities. Where not-open sites hold more content than open sites  
like Ourmedia. I've not really thought about those in Free terms,  
although they certainly are not Free.

> However, the conclusions there are subjective.

I would say that the numbers speak for themselves. But it's important  
not to mistake popularity for success...

- Rob.