Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

Björn Terelius schrieb:
> As for the usefulness of an ND license for software, consider a FPS-game 
> like counter-strike or whatever. If the source was distributed publicly 
> it would be easy to modify the client to cheat. Anybody with any 
> programming experience could create a client that automatically aim for 
> the head or something. On the other hand is is extremely difficult to do 
> this without source if it means reverse engineering the project.

Good example.

OTOH, releasing the source at least for inspection might still be a 
requirement, if only to check that it isn't malware.
Fortunately, that's an issue for another day :-)

> Here's another point. Everybody who has ever used a free, open source 
> program, please raise your hands. (Everybody raises their hands) Ok now 
> everybody who has ever modified an open source program, raise your 
> hands. (Very few does) The point is that in reality, very few people use 
> the rights of modification and commercial distribution.

The point is that you can pay or otherwise persuade somebody to do the 
modifications for you. That's exactly how most FOSS software has grown, 
so almost everybody has used software that exists because the 
modification right exists.

So this point doesn't stand up.

> Someone will
> remark that for many projects would not have become as good without the 
> GPL or free licenses. This may be true in many cases, and I think that 
> everybody should choose the best software available for their need. On 
> the other hand, the FSF thinks everybody should use free software, even 
> if there are better non free programs.

Indeed, and I think they're overstating their case here.
Though it's probably necessary to overstate to get heard at all - I 
think the FSF is doing the public an immense service, even though I 
don't buy all of their arguments.

> Yet, a lot of gratis but non-free programs exist. See below.
> I did not quite understand your response to the fact that freeware 
> exists. There are many good freeware projects and they don't use any 
> standardized license, because there is none. Hence the incompatibility 
> exists. Adding a standardized license would make the freeware more 
> useful, and could possibly persuade the developers to release it as a 
> free project later.

That's exactly the point I've been trying to make. Thanks.

Regards,
Jo