Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 07 March 2007 10:01 pm, Luis Villa wrote:
> On 3/7/07, drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 March 2007 09:39 pm, Luis Villa wrote:
> > > On 3/7/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Now I want to prove it. You know, with *evidence*. ;-)
> > > >
> > > > No facile "well it's not 'free' so it's not in the 'commons'" word
> > > > games. I need actual empirical evidence that NC (including NC-SA)
> > > > works do not get reused, improved, disseminated, etc. as efficiently
> > > > as By or By-SA works do.
> > >
> > > [Sorry, this is too short, deserves a lot more, but I'm busy ATM :/
> > >
> > >There are some variants of open source software
> > > licenses with NC terms, but they aren't popular.
> >
> > Huh? You have lost me there. Can you explain and give examples? Isn't
> > this impossible by definition?
>
> I use the term 'open source' loosely here; not OSI-approved, but
> rather in the broader family of source-available software copyright
> licenses, some of which are similar in spirit to NC. 

Now I understand, but I would suggest that this might not be the best way to 
go if you care about Free or Open Source projects.

> (Search for 
> 'commercial' in http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/ for some
> examples. You've never heard of most of them, which I think helps
> prove the point- projects which use them tend to die or relicense.)
>
> > > I disagree with Greg's suggestion that this is psychological; if
> > > people didn't want to contribute under restrictive licenses then the
> > > BSD and Apache licenses would be much more commong than they currently
> > > are. They aren't, so we have to look for non-psychological reasons.
> >
> > I am not sure I follow this line of thinking. Can you explain this as
> > well? (No pressure.)
>
> Greg says:
>
> "Well, it's based in part in an understanding of human psychology.
> Why do people contribute to a Free project?
> The answer seems to reflect a notion that most people who contribute
> to Free projects don't want to contribute their time and energy to
> something that is restricted as much as CC-NC is."
>
> While Greg wasn't completely clear, he seemed to be arguing that other
> things being equal, people would contribute to projects under less
> restrictive licenses.
>
> GPL is a more restrictive license than BSD or Apache, and yet is
> vastly more popular, so I think Greg's contention (if I understand it
> correctly) is incorrect.

If we only looked at one generation, perhaps, but I happen to think that 
people look to generations beyond. So while contributing to a BSD project 
might be seen as contributing to a project with a less restrictive license, 
one more generation results in contributing to a project with way more 
restrictions.

That could easily be the calculation going on.
>
> Hope that clarifies-

It does, thanks.

> Luis

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)