Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <greglondon.1 AT gmail.com>]

On 4/25/07, Björn Terelius <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com> wrote:

2) I've never, not even once, said that NC/ND is "half open" or anything like that.

 

 

Someone else did in this discussion and you seemed to be coming

down on the same page as them.

 

 

 

I cant add a BY clause to a GPL license, right?
And the entire problem was that the Creative Commons
recommend not using CC licenses for software.

 

What sort of attribution do you want from a GPL piece

of software? Your name on a splash screen everytime

the user launches the software?  You can't remove copyright

notices under the GNU-GPL. That generally creates a history

in all the files of all the people who made contributions to that

file. And that is generally accepted as how to get acknowledged

for contributing to a GNU-GPL project.

 

Attribution has its own baggage. When overdone, it gets

combersome.

 

 

 

> Some people have also voiced fear of a political backlash
> if CC endorsed the use of software licenses. Please explain.

See above. the floss software folks had spent years fighting
over and eventually sorting out what "Free" meant.
Then CC comes in with NC, ND, SA, BY licenses all under the
"Some Rights Reserved" banner as if all the licenses are
different degrees of the same thing. They're not.

They did not  "sort out what Free meant". They just made a definition. Whether or not freeware is free depends entirely on the definition of free. Since the Free Software definition is universally accepted, people use tit, but that does not mean that it is a superior ideology.

 

 

Wow. I just started a thread about CC misusing the word "Freedom"

on their front page, and low and behold, you're telling me that

Freedom means whatever you want it to mean.

 

I think you just proved my argument that CC shouldn't use

ambiguous terms if it wants to be accurate.

 

On the other hand, if CC wants to use completely subjective

terms and encourage people to redefine those terms to mean

whatever they want it to mean, then, yeah, they should probably

keep using the term "Freedom".

 

Somewhere out there, someone thinks using CC-NC-ND-BY

has something to do with Freedom.

 

If CC is more interested in people using their licenses

than in people understanding what it is they're doing,

then they should continue to encourage people to redefine

terms to fit their needs. Freedom is as freedom does.

 

Freedom is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you're going to get.

 

Because apparently, everyone wants THEIR license to qualify

as having somethign to do with FREEDOM, because FREEDOM

is cool.

 

So, by all means, keep arguing that all the people who worked

out what Free as in Speech software means, just came up

with an arbitrary definition, and keep arguing that you should

be able to change the definition of freedom so that you can

use CC-NC-ND-BY and still call it a "Free" license.

 

 

 

 

 

Freedoms and rights are the same thing.

 

 

OH, REALLY?????
 

 

IF THEY"RE THE SAME THING, THEN USE "RIGHTS" INSTEAD OF "FREEDOM".

 

But you won't. because they're not the same to you.

 

The word "freedom" is far more desirable from an emotional point of view than

"rights". Freedom is all warm and fuzzy. Rights is boring and legal.

 

So even if they mean the same thing, and even if "rights" is far more likely

to not be confused with the whole "Free software movement", you'll continue

to use the word "free" because it's warm and fuzzy and makes you feel like

you're doing something for the community.

 

Which only proves my point in the other discusion:

CC should change its front page to say "rights" instead of "freedom"

because "rights" can't be confused with the Free Software movement.

 

But if CC wants to continue encouraging people like you to think

"freedom" and "rights" are no different, then they should keep

using emotive and confusing words.

 

I mean a license granting unlimited rights to copy, use

and distribute the program. The reason I'm interested

in those precise freedoms is that IMHO those are the

freedoms the end users actually use

 

 

Then use CC-NC-ND-BY. Just don't use the term "free" when you do.

Use the phrase "at no charge" when discussing price, and don't

kid yourself that it has anything to do with freedom.

Or do kid yourself, just don't do it where people who know the

difference can see it.

 

Or, use CC-SA-BY. Folks will get the rights you're concerned

about, and some others that would actually make it useful

to the community, and may even qualify as Free.

But something tells me you're not looking to make the work

Freely available to the comunity like that.

 

Or, use GNU-GPL and get the attribution that every other

software developer on a GPL project gets.

 

The advertising clause of the BSD license was found

by the free software community to be a detriment to

the community and was removed.

 

but they didn't "sort out" what freedom meant. as you say.

They just picked an arbitrary set of rights, put them in a

list and called them Free. You should be able to pick

an equally arbitrary set of rights and call that free too,

right?

 

Whatever.