Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Björn Terelius" <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com>]

On 4/24/07, Prodromos Tsiavos <p.tsiavos AT lse.ac.uk> wrote:

A few thoughts and a CC history question ;)

The practical aspect
- A standardized ND-type license for software would nevertheless be useful
for other reasons and hence CC may be interested in supporting such a
scheme. Indicatively, such a standardized license would allow greater
clarity in the licensing terms regarding the use of the software by the End
User and promote a minimum standard of good licensing practices for
freeware.

This is precisely why I think it would be good to have a CC endorsed software license.
 

- I am not sure a vendor would move from freeware to free software as a
result of her experience with a standardized ND-type licence. It is more
likely she is going to do it only if it fits her business model. Having said
that, it would potentially push towards a clearer _expression_ of licensing
terms and in that sense it could be a positive development.

It would push towards a clearer _expression_ of licensing terms, but I still think that it might convince companies to move towards more freedom. For example, if I remember correctly the Adobe Acrobat Reader license does not permit redistribution. This restriction is really unnecessary and could probably be removed, making the program suited for a CC BY-ND-NC license, if CC licenses were common for software. The good thing about CC is that the conditions are intuitive and clear. This might make Adobe consider if some other license could be possible instead, and seeing that there already exists free, open source readers, they might consider releasing the source and removing the ND clause (especially if the customers asked politely). This would make the Reader almost free, or free as long as nobody tries to use it to compete with Adobe. This would benefit the open source community without hurting Adobe, since they would not loose any income. Indeed, they may even gain by doing this, since some of the development would be done by the open source community.
 

The political aspect:
- CC already has a dubious reputation regarding its relationship with
principles of free as in free software and a rather good link with free as
in free choice. If we go for yet another non-free software-like licence
(irrespective of how useful it may be), we need to assess the political
impact of such an initiative. Especially if this is to be done in the realms
of software which is the FSF/Debian home court...

I agree, the political implications must be considered, though I am not qualified for doing it. Personally I don't think that the FSF should be allowed to dictate the terms of CC licenses.
 

-Björn Terelius