Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Nova Christopher wrote:
>  Good points. I started a 'netlabel' for the same reasons you speak
>  of, being inspired by open-source and free music and, well, free
>  stuff in general. Why spend a lot of money when I can use something
>  else, and it will do everything I need it to? Unfotunately, this is
>  often not the case with music-making software. I suspect that's why
>  most of them cost money... someone has found an opportunity to
>  capitalize on some novel ideas.

As for there not being any powerful free software competitors for
music-creation software, this may well have been true a year ago,
but it is not anymore:

Some discussion of the subject:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/c64_studio_project
http://linux-sound.org
http://lad.linuxaudio.org/faq.php

There's also some reviews by Dave Phillips in LinuxUser&Developer
#62 and #64 (in fact this is a pretty popular subject matter for
LU&D because the lead editor is a principal on the '64 Studio'
Linux distribution project -- he also wrote the FSM article above).

http://64studio.com

Software:
http://ardour.org
http://www.hydrogen-music.org
http://www.muse-sequencer.org
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com

I'm not a musician myself, so I can't personally recommend these
packages, but I know musicians who think they are serious competitors
for the proprietary equivalents, in the same way that Gimp is for
Photoshop.  They aren't exact equivalents, but in fact that is often
an advantage.  There are a number of artists using these tools,
as illustrated here:

http://lam.fugal.net
http://lac.zkm.de/2006/people.shtml
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/software

Also, I wouldn't bet too heavily on the profit motive as a seed for
innovation. The profit motive is good for progress, but the free
sharing environment enabled by copyleft licensing is better.

That's why the free sharing of information has always been a
part of the academic research environment.  The profit motive
usually has more to do with offsetting marketing and production
than with fuelling innovation, because it partially interferes
with innovation.  As the product complexity and rate of
evolution increases, the interference becomes more important
than the motivation.  As a result, you can predict with assurance
that these free music development suites will pull-ahead of
proprietary competitors in the future in what they are capable
of doing.

>  In the case of offering a prize, I do feel the software I choose to
>  award will be very fitting for the contestants. But in the case of
>  offering free software that was made free (open-source, or freeware
>  or even some shareware) it might feel less like a 'prize' since
>  anyone else could simply download it, and not necessarily have to
>  provide anything in exchange (such as a winning song).

That's why I didn't recommend offering the free software tools
as prizes, but rather things you could use with them -- either
information resources (books or tied-in services) or hardware.

My bet is that hardware would be the most popular.

Cheers,
Terry

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