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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Version 3.0 -- It's Happening & With BY-SA CompatibilityLanguageToo

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Version 3.0 -- It's Happening & With BY-SA CompatibilityLanguageToo
  • Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:01:49 -0500

drew Roberts wrote:
Well,would someone connected with CC who is in the know explain this quote from their web site:

"We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free."

Do they mean libre or gratis. Or both.

I'm not presently connected with CC, but I read that statement as meaning gratis.

That's the meaning I that one without background in the free software movement would assume on reading that statement.

And also once again from their history page:

http://creativecommons.org/about/history

"Creative Commons' first project, in December 2002, was the release of a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL),"

So, they may not have been initially constituted on the norms of free software, but they were at least in part inspired by the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) by their own admission.
Thus, copyleft was one of the initial inspirations for CC. It is not too much to think that the existing definition of Free (libre) should be respected. Am I crazy here?

Yes.

Well, not crazy, just wrong. But ask a rhetorical question, get a rhetorical answer. :-)

This passage talks about being inspired by the GPL itself, not by the rhetoric of "freedom" around the GPL. And that's completely true. In this passage, "free" is referring not to the content, but the license itself. There is no charge for using the license and no one is prohibited from using the license.

There is a problem here in that the term "free" is a term of art coming out of the free software movement, but that the general English-speaking public doesn't know that precise meaning. I am unconvinced that it is CC's responsibility to educate the general public about this distinction. There are lots of good organizations working hard towards that goal; CC's strength is in generating good licenses and in building tools to help people find content released under those licenses.

James





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