Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Dana Powers" <dana.powers AT gmail.com>]

On 2/5/07, Emerson Clarke <emerson.clarke AT gmail.com> wrote:

I was only quoting from some sources i read recently, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_and_GPL_licensing

I think that article could use some major clarification and cleaning up:

"The GPL requires the software to always be free..."
 

That's not true.  It requires that source code be distributed (or at least made available) with object code, and it permits further redistribution by users/distributees on the same terms.  There are no requirements one way or the other about (1) pricing or (2) types of use, although the distribution restrictions no doubt influence choices about both.  Whether you think these restrictions make the GPL licensing system more compatible with "freedom" is an entirely separate question.

CC licenses don't address the object code / source code distinction, so they usually are not recommended for software licensing.  But the license that comes to mind for what you're looking for is one of Microsoft's Shared Source licenses, particularly the CLI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source#Microsoft_Shared_Source_Common_Language_Infrastructure

It goes without saying that licenses like these have been shunned by the free-software and open source communities because they are very skeptical of usage restrictions (neither seem particularly fond of CC-NC).

Dana