Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Michael Tiemann <tiemann AT redhat.com>]

On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 17:21 +0000, Emerson Clarke wrote:
> > 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!
> 
> Thats just semantics, one way of making money is licensing the
> software to commercial users.  I dont see anything wrong with this...

There are two camps on this subject: those in the free software
community who believe it is morally and ethically wrong to use
mechanisms like licensing fees to discourage users from freely sharing
and participating in the development of software as a community.  And
those in the open source community who do not say that it is wrong to
license proprietary software, but wrong to confuse that with open
source.  I am aware that this is a Creative Commons mailing list, not an
Open Source mailing list, so I'm aware that the question may validly
wander into territories beyond those claimed by these two camps.

> I dont want to prevent commercial use, i just want to force that a
> licensing fee is paid in such circumstances.  Commercial organisations
> should not have an issue with this, especially if the license is very
> reasonable.

Again, commercial organizations pay all kinds of licensing fees all the
time--sometimes happily, sometimes not, sometimes willingly, sometimes
not, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.  The reasonableness of your
license charging royalties is not, per se, either a guarantee nor a
prohibition of commercial use.  But it makes your approach fundamentally
outside the boundaries of both the free software and the open source
communities.  Any success you see coming from those communities will
not, therefore, automatically translate to your fee-based licensing
regime.

> I don't think that in principle this makes the software any less free
> than the GPL.  As i said earlier, the only reason the GPL doesnt claim
> license fees is becuase traditionally the attribution of such fees
> would be difficult.  In all other areas the GPL strives to create an
> ecosystem where free software developers and commercial software
> developers are separated.

This reflects your misunderstanding of the history, purpose, effect, and
expectations of the GPL.  As a person who started a business in 1989
based exclusively on GPL-licensed software, I can state based on
personal experience that the success of that company was in no way based
upon the forced separation of free and commercial software developers.

> I believe im more in the BSD style camp of open source licenses, where
> if something is free, it should be truly free.  Except that i want
> people who make money from it to give me some of that money, as is
> only fair.

There are many who share your preference for BSD-style licenses, but the
second statement is only true in your mind.  You are welcome to attempt
to prove that others believe the same by measuring your commercial
success against the commercial success of true open source companies.
Your belief that the GPL is fundamentally incompatible with commerce is
factually incorrect, as my own experience, and the experience of
numerous other open source companies demonstrates.  You should not use
counter-factual information as the basis of an argument.

M