Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

White, Phil wrote:
>  TH: he also asserted that the case for free-copyleft versus
>  proprietory TH: -assignment was not proven (060623:1746)
>
>  Incorrect. I have, however, said that there are times when other
>  licenses maybe more appropriate. I also said that 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.

Incorrect? Here's what you said, and what I replied, for the record:

> > With the greatest of respect, I am not here to substantiate
> > anything. I have made statements, and that should be good enough. How 
do I
> > prove my assertions? In truth, I cannot, but then again you cannot
> > do likewise to the contrary.
>
>  Um, actually I can. That's what I meant by "empirical". It's quite
>  easy to compare the success of institutions like "H2G2" (proprietary
>  assignment license) with "Wikipedia" (free licenses). H2G2 is far
>  from dead, of course, but has nowhere near the success of Wikipedia.
>
>  For a more "useful arts" comparison, look at the pathetic atrophy of
>  Microsoft's "shared source" community and Sun's "community source
>  license" compared to the roaring success of free/copyleft software
>  projects. The legal difference is precisely the same as between your
>  project and a free-collaboration project.
>
>  I of course, have a solid theory as to why that is, but my argument
>  is not merely theoretical, and certainly not a mere hypothesis.
>
>  I don't really understand your firewall problem, or why you can't
>  just use a public server for this project (it's not like they're
>  expensive, and there are plenty of services like Sourceforge or Wikia
>  that would surely host the site for you for free). If your own
>  organization is preventing you from doing that, then they are going
>  to wind up as the actual owners of the site's IP, and *you* should be
>  worried about the IP-hijacking scenario for your own self (not only
>  because it'll mean you lose control, but also your reputation with
>  contributors is hanging on the 'character' of your employer!).
>
>  Of course, I don't say this with any serious hope to sway you at this
>  point. But don't try to argue that I have no support for the
>  position -- years of experience and a sound theoretical understanding
>  of the social dynamics behind collaboration in both an academic and a
>  free-culture setting have informed my opinion.
>
>  Greg has argued the theoretical case exceedingly well, and I have
>  just pointed out some of the most visible facts supporting that
>  theory. To the degree that a medical professional esteems himself a
>  scientist, he should be moved by such methods.

The only unscientific part about my argument is that if I really wanted
to make publication quality claims I would need to find statistical
metrics to prove:

1) Wikipedia is vastly more 'successful' than H2G2

2) 'free-licensed open-source' communities are more
   'successful' than 'shared source' or 'sun community source'
   communities

3) Which of course, requires me to define 'successful' in terms
   of objective metrics (e.g. LoC, bugs/LoC, # words, # topics,
   # of contributors, etc).

However, neither Phil, nor anyone else has challenged these
assertions of fact.  The consensus appears to be that the numerical
difference is so overwhelmingly great that actually counting it
out is sort of unnecessary (I suspect this is true, but as I posted to
cc-community, I'd really prefer to see a real study collect these
statistics).

So you're "half-right": you can't substantiate your claims, but
I CAN substantiate mine.  If you've challenged my facts or my
analysis of them, I haven't noticed it. ISTM, you've just ignored
them because they refute your claims.

I don't deny that occasionally, bold leaders make important
progress by ignoring evidence and going on a gut feeling, but
I'm not sure that you appreciate this is what you are doing.
And I really believe that in this case your 'gut feeling' is wrong.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com