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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL
  • Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:54:08 +0200

Erik Moeller schrieb:
On 4/23/07, Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org> wrote:
However, they aren't applicable to all situations. The GPL is
Attribution/Derivative/Share-Alike, the LGPL is Attribution/Derivative.
There's no option for Noncommercial or No-Derivative.

I think cc.org could help here.

If by "help" you mean "cause needless division, friction and
incompatibility", then yes ;-).

Please elaborate.
I think to the contrary: since there's a need for non-free licenses (as the various license models have shown), it will help reduce the license clutter for software what isn't free by the FOSS definition but still useful to the general public.

Even if one buys into the notion that there are different "sharing
cultures" around culture as a whole,

Actually, CC already has embraced that notion.
Otherwise, there would be just a single license, its contents equivalent to what's currently known as "Attribution/Share-Alike".

> the open source/free software movement has clearly converged on a high
> standard of freedom.

Of course those who write FOSS have converged on licensing terms that uphold the FOSS definition; that's a circular argument.
It neglects those who don't fit the definition of FOSS.

> The success stories of Apache, Linux, MySQL, and
> so on would have been impossible without commercial use rights.

Sure. A Commercial or Non-Derivative license would definitely have been wrong for these software packages.
On the other hands, there are numerous less well-known software packages that would have been more clearly labelled as "this is not Open Source but you can use it anyway" if cc.org offered those other licenses.

If you want to create a new fringe movement, I don't think it is the
role of CC to support that.

No.
The GPL looks like good legal work, but it doesn't really fit the licensing model of cc.org, and I'm curious why there's such a peculiar exception. Software is special, but it's not so special that it warrants such a massive exception as having just a single license that uses different language, different legal concepts, etc.
I also see drawbacks; it's unclear how to apply the CC framework to a work that's a combination of software and other art, for example.

Regards,
Jo




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