Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Feb 5, 2007, at 17:52, Emerson Clarke wrote:
> > As such i think it has both significant educational and commercial
> > value.  I would like to be able to provide it free to the open source
> > and academic communities, but i do not wish for people to be able to
> > gain commercially from my work.
>
> You can't--by definition. If the license doesn't allow commercial  
> use, it isn't an Open Source license. If your license does not allow  
> commercial use, you are not sharing with the Open Source community.

Emerson didn't say that he wanted it to be "Open Source."  He just 
wanted to "provide it for free."  You have a point that the 
non-commercial restriction will not make his software as useful for many 
academic and FOSS users as it would be under a genuinely Open Source of 
Free license.  But he can still share his work and offer permission for 
some uses to others.

> It is very unfortunate that CC has licenses that don't allow  
> commercial use under the same brand as its licenses that follow Free  
> Software and Open Source principles. Moreover, it is very unfortunate  
> that content licensed under these "non-commercial" licenses is  
> paraded as "Open Content" or "Open Music" and the association with  
> Open Source risks diluting the meaning of Open Source. (Likewise,  
> parading such content as "Free Culture" risks diluting the meaning of  
> Free Software.)

CC offers standardized licenses for a range of permissions.  The brands 
that matter for free and open software are brands created by 
organizations devoted to copyleft principles.  CC doesn't claim that all 
of its licenses meet those principles.  CC doesn't use "Free Culture" to 
describe itself or its licenses.

> I suggest focusing on how you can make money instead of focusing on  
> preventing others from gaining commercially.

Hear hear!

James