Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Björn Terelius wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.

Are there examples of significant legal disputes that have arisen out of
disagreements about the use of freeware?  I would think that exactitide
of license doesn't matter so much.  Freeware developers don't go around
suing users; users don't go around suing developers; as long as it's
reasonably clear that the developer isn't allowing others to develop
competing derivative works, there aren't developer-developer suits,
either.  In that atmosphere of comparatively lower suspicion, imprecise
licensing isn't an urgent problem.

Or perhaps I am wrong, and there are big legal fights over freeware that
better licenses could have solved?

> 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.

The use of CC licenses for software is discouraged (for reasons already
noted).  But you can apply a CC license to software.  For freeware,
BY-ND seems fairly decent.  Anyone can use the free version; commercial
intermediaries can make some money distibuting it conveniently; no one
can make money off of it.  IF you take the freeware business model as
given, and IF you're not worried about getting the license exactly
right, BY-ND seems like a perfectly fine license.

James