Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mia Garlick <mia AT creativecommons.org>]

personally i think there is also another problem with shared source  
licenses.  as i understand it, a shared source license says: you may  
look at the source code but you may not use it or may only use it in  
limited circumstances.  given copyright infringement is proven by a  
plaintiff demonstrating access and substantial similarity, it would  
seem incredibly easy — if a licensee ever develops code that is  
similar to the shared sourced licensed code (for any project), for a  
plaintiff to prove copyright infringement because the defendant most  
certainly has had access...thus, any litigation would hinge on  
substantial similarity and involve quite a lot of back and forth  
arguing over whether parts of the code were similar and/or if they  
are, whether those parts are dictated by function or are protectable  
expression...great for the lawyers engaged to argue the case but not  
so great for coders...

On Feb 5, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Michael Tiemann wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 18:47 +0000, Emerson Clarke wrote:
> > Dana,
> >
> > Thanks, i was actually looking at the microsoft licenses this  
> > morning.
> >  But as you suggested, they do not go down well with the open source
> > community.
>
> The problem with the Microsoft licenses is not that they come from
> Microsoft.  It's that Microsoft has not submitted the licenses to the
> Open Source Initiative's license approval process, so they have not be
> discussed, so they cannot be approved by the OSI board, and therefore
> they are not OSI-approved licenses.  If and when Microsoft submits a
> license to the process, they will get the same fair hearing that any
> other submission would receive, and the invitation to do so remains
> open.  Until then, the open source community (or at least this open
> source community member) will take a wait-and-see approach.
>
> Michael Tiemann
> President, Open Source Initiative
>
>
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