Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On 4/24/07, drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com> wrote:

On Tuesday 24 April 2007 08:41 am, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> drew Roberts schrieb:
> > I think that's his point. Get them to agree on one and then ask CC to
> > bless it.
> >
> > When people who like Free Software see the GPL, BSD, MIT, etc, they see
> > the one they like as good for their use and use it. Why haven't the
> > non-Free freeware guys managed to come up with on in all these years?

 

> Though, in this particular case, I do have at least a partial answer:
> because those companies that have a legal department good enough to set
> up such a license, they will invariably come up with one that's too
> restrictive for general usage. Corporate lawyers are, after all, charged
> with upholding the company's goals, not with public interest.

So, there is no community? No common interest? All these little guys can't
pool a bit of money and get a license craftet that meets their needs? In all
these years? I personally ran up on freeware and shareware before I
encountered the concept of Free Software. Is there no motivation to find a
common license? No perceived benefit?
>

I think I answered this question in a previous post. There are no communities because freeware (unlike free software) doesn't depend on them. While it is unfortunate that there are no communities, I still think it will be next to impossible to create, and in any case, it is only the actual freeware developers who suffer from it. The lack of a standardized license however makes everybody suffer, because one has the choice between:
A) Not use freeware at all, even when is is superior to existing software
B) Use it but skip reading the license agreement. In this case you wont know if your violating the copyright.
C) Read a new, often ambiguous, sometimes unnecessarily restrictive license for each freeware program one wants to install.

I am not satisfied with any of the above solutions, so I would prefer a standardized license. Since a standard is not likely to emerge spontaneously, I think it would be a good idea if a well known license like CC could be adapted to software.