Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Lets try to keep the discussion constructive. I'll try to summarize the main topics so far.

The ordinary CC license does a good job in giving artists an easy way of choosing licensing conditions for their creations. At present the options are BY, SA, ND and NC, and there does not seem to be any strong dislike of these options when applied to content. As Joachim Durchholz pointed out, the Creative Commons discourages all use of the licenses when applied to software, because they were not written with software in mind. The GPL and LGPL may be considered roughly equivalent to BY-SA and BY respectively (but I would contest this, as the GPL does not have any clear BY clause). This leaves the NC and ND options.

A lot of useful programs are developed, and distributed with rights to copy, use and redistribute, ie with rights similar to BY-ND or BY-NC. There is (obviously) no free, open source license that fit those terms, and furthermore there is (as previously discussed) no standardized freeware license. Even though Free Software has proven itself to be very useful in many cases, we've had some examples of cases where it is not the ideal terms for licensing, but where a license with options like BY,SA,ND,NC would do the trick.

Some people have suggested saying "All rights reserved", but still posting the program for free download on the net. However, "all right reserved" legally means that ALL rights not explicitly given is reserved. One could argue that even the right to use and redistribute is reserved. So this is not an option for freeware. Besides, just "all rights reserved" does not imply a disclaimer of no warranty, which is certainly desirable in a software license.

Some people have also voiced fear of a political backlash if CC endorsed the use of software licenses. Please explain. What form would the reprisals take, and why would they happen at all? After all, CC could still recommend or default to a GPL-like license for software.

Let me quote the cc.org homepage: 'Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists,
artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the
freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."' 

I think it is unfortunate that CC does not extend this help to programmers, and I see no reason (other than the practical) why it hasn't been done. At the moment, all major software licenses are either completely Free or proprietary ("All right reserved"). IMHO I think it would be great if programmers, too, could easily mark their creative work with the
freedoms THEY want it to carry.

From a practical point of view, the existing licenses may not be suited for a software adaptation, as they are clearly designed for content. I can fully understand that people are unwilling to complicate the existing license by adding clauses that only applies to software. But perhaps it is possible to create a separate  license for software, just like CC has a sampling license, a founders copyright, a developing nations etc.

Regards
-Bjorn Terelius