Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <teloscorbin AT gmail.com>]

On 6/26/06, White, Phil <Phil.White AT rjah.nhs.uk> wrote:
######################################################################
> 1) My overly sensitive nature!
> Post a comment such as
> GL: You soak up all the contributions from people,
> GL: have them sign copyright over to you, and then
> GL: when they've made the work even better, you
> GL: have the sole right to sell it to MajorCorp and
> GL: leave your contributors...
> and you have the opportunity to be misunderstood
> over the meaning of the word 'you'.
> Does that refer to Me, Us, or Them?

Oh, I mean't "you" as in you, Phil White.
But you conveniently dropped the prefix
to this entire quote which was
"signing copyright to you means YOU COULD..."

So, it wasn't a question of who "you" referred to,
it was a question of me telling you what your
license/user-agreement combination would
allow you to do, and you consistently reading
such comments as if I were accusing you of
INTENDING to do such things.

The entire email is available here
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2006-June/003765.html

I've explained as much numerous times,
several posters on this list also pointed out
the difference, and even after all that, you
bring it up again and quote me out of context
as if I said you intend to do devious things.

######################################################################
> My comments up to that point had already indicated
> I could NOT make do with a 'Free/Libre' license.

Normally, I wouldn't point it out, but since you have a
tendancy to selectively quote me and a creative use
of what words mean in general, I'll point out a fundamental
issue with words here: It isn't that you "could NOT make do"
it's that you do not WANT to make do. You've presented
nothing in your scenario that demands central control
of the document, other than to invoke that you
"are talking Medical Policy documents here"

So, you can make do with a Free/Libre license,
you simply don't want to. It's your right to do
whatever you want with your works, but I'm having
a bit of a trouble with you casting the situation
such that (1) the decision is outside your control,
or (2) that the requirements of your project DEMAND
that you maintain central control. Neither is true.

>  I kid not myself, you, nor anyone else.

You're kidding me when you say that you
"could NOT make do with a 'Free/Libre' license"
######################################################################
> I have made statements as to why I thought
> my scheme would work whereas the Free system would not
> I maintained that neither TH nor myself could prove our own
> respective assertion in this particular context of application.

You can't logically prove any of this a priori.
Both Free and proprietary systems are human
endeavors and are subject to the whims of humans.
These are not abstract boolean logic systems or
models based on pure mathematics. They are
based in human behaviour.

There is, however, plenty of historical evidence
to support the idea that if you want people to
contribute to your project, you need to make sure
the work is equally shared between all contributers.
The more a project requires contributers to be
at a disadvantage to someone, the less likely
they are to contribute to the project.
######################################################################
> 4) intentions, motivations, :
>
> The intention of the wiki web-site:
> To maintain a single, self-maintained entity.

maintained by whom?

> What is important is to protect the integrity of
> the data held on the site.

integrity will be determined by whom?

> Offer as many freedoms as possible, but that
> is not the main motivation.

who's motivation?

> Take the ego of the hostmaster out of the
> equation as much as is possible.

And how would we measurably know that you've
succeeded in accomplishing this?

> Forking can be good - but equally can be bad.

Irrelevant.

> In truth, "United we stand, divided we fall".

Truth?  Good grief, you've snatched something out of midair here.
I know of NO project that used a Free license that collapsed
because of a fork. As far as I can tell, you started with this
as your main and most important premise, and it has driven
every decision you've made to date. Yet, this premise is not
supported by reality.

Yes, forks can be a problem, but they've never killed a project
that I know of. Linux has dozens of forks and flavors and yet
it survives. So stop telling me you can't use Free licensing
and stop telling me that a fork will kill a project.

> Is a fork just disruptive, or destructive?
> Fork in public - no worries. Fork in private
> - No! You are taking a specialist resource,
> and contributing nothing to
> its maintenance or upkeep.

You're clearly in the proprietary mind set.
You lose nothing when someone copies a free work
and modifies it in private. NOTHING. You lose nothing
when someone copies a free work and never pays
you anything. This whole paragraph stinks of
proprietary thinking. The point of making a work
Free is that you are offering it as a gift to the
public, a gift that comes with no expectations
other than to keep it Free. You've got a serious
set of expecations there. And it isn't because
it HAS to be that way or because the project
HAS to have these expectations, it's because you
have these expectations and you've brought them
to the project.

> This, amongst other things, recognizes one major right: that a work may
> not be modified without consent.

Seriously. You are making this up. This is all out of thin air.
The FLOSS community doesn't hold this view at all.
You are espousing a proprietary view. Under copyright,
the author gets exclusive right to copy, distribute, and derive
the work. In a Free community, those rights are given to everyone.

If that's how you want to run this project that's fine.
But you need to get that this is your decision, your viewpoint
that you're bringing to the project, not a view that the project
is bringing to you.


> With no centralized wiki, an author has no knowledge of modification.
> They must therefore consent beforehand to
> allow, or disallow modification, without knowing what the result will
> be. Some authors will. Some, most definitely, will not. I am not saying
> one of them is right, the other, wrong. That is their choice and I
> respect that. BUT, if I can keep them BOTH happy, then I get twice the
> number of contributors.

You will make YOU happy, because this is your viewpoint,
and your having the project reflect that. Some person on the
other side of the planet, who doen't know you from Adam,
will see someone who is essentially saying "trust me", and
if that person understands copyright at all, they will understand
they have little incentive to contribute to your project.

People contribute to the WORK, not to the guy who came up
with the idea for the work. You've turned everything around and
made it about you, not the project.

> GL: And when Charlie wants to fork off of Bob's version,
> GL: he has to notify: Bob, Alice, and Phil. (060626:1245)
>
> Incorrect. Charlie modifies the wiki. Bob, Alice & Phil can 'look in' if
> they wish to. They don't have to, but Charlie's obligation has been met.

You seriously aren't getting this.
For one, that was in response to drew's proposal.
And for another, modifying the gawdamn wiki is not Freedom.
If Charlie chooses to modify your wiki, fine, but if the project
is Free, then he could take the work, create a fork that you don't
like, put it up on his own website, and invite people to contribute
to THAT instead.

> GL: Phil's proposal is to make himself the central authority...
> GL: (060626:1017)
>
> Only out of ignorance. Propose a system where THE SITE has central
> authority and control, and I'll go with you.

THERE IS NO SUCH SYSTEM.
Projects like this are not a system of logic and computers.
They require PEOPLE. You cannot have a computer generate
random sentences and copyright them. It requires a PERSON
exhibiting some form of CREATIVE EXPRESSION to qualify
for copyright protection. So there is no way to have a SITE
have central authority without having SOMEONE BEHIND IT.

> GL: If, HYPOTHETICALLY, sometime down the road, Phil betrays
> GL: his position  of trust and does something to the project that is
> GL: for his benefit at the expense of the work itself, then NO-ONE
> GL: can step in and save the work. (060624:1058)
>
> What sort of affidavit would you like?

It isn't me you have to convince, it's your contributers.
If you can convince them to assign copyright to you
while you license the works CC-ND, then more power
to you. It would be the equivalent of convincing someone
that painting a fence isn't a job that just anyone can do,
that it takes  aspecial talent, blah, blah, blah, and then
end up with a brush in their hand while you sit back and
watch.

It may be that your set of potential contributers
are so small that the specific license won't matter.

All I'm saying is it isn't Free. All I'm saying is that
you are taking one issue (forks) and inflating it
to be such a monstrous boogeyman, that you're
willing to embrace several tactics that guarantee
making the work LESS FREE.

You are so afraid of someone making a content
fork, of editing the work without telling you about
it, that you were willing to create a system that
(1) is not Free by prohibiting modifications off site
(2) requires a Trustworthy Trent by forcing all
contributers assign copyrigh to you,
(3) makes it easy for you to betray that trust
and create a license fork of the project and
(4) allows you to take down the project as a whole
and leave the public with nothing but CC-ND works.

The original scenario was to license the work
CC-ND and require peopel assign copyright to you,
a scenario that contains multiple serious non-Free
issues with it, all because you want to prevent
the POSSIBILITY of secret modifications.

It's almost as absurd as being so afraid of
diesel fumes that you decide to build a car
that runs on fissionable materials. You make
the first threat go away, but you've replaced
with with four other threats that are potentially
far worse.

Linux has several content forks, all of which are
under GNU-GPL, which means if any variation
contains something really good, all the other
versions can adopt it for Free.

And if you want to use a non-Free license, that's
your choice. But don't tell me you have to do it,
and don't tell me you're "protecting" the work,
and don't tell me you're trying to make sure the
project stays "shared". You're not. it's fine that
you're not. It's your copyright, you can do what
you want with it. Just call it what it is.

Greg