Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Andres Guadamuz <a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk>]

Greg London wrote:

> Of course, the definition isn't cool.

Perfect, I agree with you, but not for the same reasons. The definition
isn't "cool" because nobody cares, but that's another matter.

> But the word Freedom is cool, yes?
> Everybody loves freedom.
> It's like politicians kissing babies.
> Everyone loves babies, right?

This is where we get back to square one. Freedom is not trade marked by
the FSF, but it seems like you're trying to imply that it is. Freedom is
a word with several meanings (just the point James was making). Only a
small minority of people know what Freedom(TM) means, in the FSF sense
of course. Not all uses of the word freedom in the open licence context
are trying to use the Freedom definition.

> The problem comes up when someone uses the same words
> as the Free Software groups but intend them to have a different
> definition. The problem is when people want the coolness of
> being associated with something like Free Software, without
> having to actually do anything the way a free software community
> does it.

And here you are contradicting yourself. Either Free Software is cool,
or it isn't. In your first sentence you imply that it isn't, so why
would CC want to involve itself with it? You think FS is cool, fine, but
my point is that CC's target audience doesn't know what FS is, or even
what the Fee Software definition is.

[Anecdotal evidence warning] I teach a FLOSS class every year, and at
the beginning of the class I ask for a show of hands on the various
terms and definitions. The number of students that have never heard of
FS has remained unchanged (that is, next to 0). I have noticed a slight
increase in students who have heard about either open source or Creative
Commons.

The prevalence of a term in the software development community does not
make something desirable to the wider community, particularly something
which may carry its own ideological baggage.


-- 
Andres Guadamuz
AHRC Research Centre for Studies in
Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Old College, South Bridge
Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

Tel: 44 (0)131 6509699
Fax: 44 (0)131 6506317
a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrb/

IP/IT/Medical Law LLM by Distance Learning
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