Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On 4/25/07, Greg London <greglondon.1 AT gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/25/07, Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org > wrote:
 

You *can* release NC and ND licensed stuff and to the public a service.
It's just less of a service than releasing it without the NC and ND
burdening.

 

Oh come on.

Anyone releasing someing under NC and/or ND is doing so

more for their personal benefit than for the benefit of the

community. Free samples so that people come and buy more.

Or free samples so they get a chance of getting discovered

and someone comes in and publishes their work.

 

If you release something under SA or GNU-GPL or BSD or BY

then you are actually giving the community something more than

you are directly getting back.

 

copyleft et al are barn raising licenses.

NC and ND are types of commercial advertising,

guerrilla marketing, free samples, hype generators, etc.

Do you really think that all freeware are just crippled versions of commercial software? Lots of developers of freeware don't even offer any commercial version.

There are many reasons for not giving away the source:
1) All programs (even freeware and free projects) compete, but
   unlike commersial ones, the gratis measure success in users,
   not money. Keeping a source closed will give you a competitive
   advantage. This may not be nice, but it may be the only way to
   get into a tough business. Opening the sources may come later,
   after building a solid user base.
2) As noted before, it is easier to prevent cheating in games,
   by not releasing the source. I've actually heard of game developers
   going to such extremes as obfuscating the code to avoid reverse
   engineering. If they consider obfuscating to make the asm less
   clear, I doubt anyone will get them to publish their source.
3) The program may be good, but the sources may be insufficiently
    documented, or contain functions requiring an unintuitive
    calling convention. (Someone will probably claim that then
    freeware has a lower code quality, so it is safer to use Free
    Software. I would respond by saying that many people release
    the program as open source despite having poor documentation.
    I know a highly successful program, implementing several difficult
    algorithms for factoring large integers. The professor of a course
    I took looked at it and deemed the code unusable. He even used
    it as an example of how not to structure the code in one of his
    beginner classes. So bad code does not necessarily imply a
    bad program, and bad code exist even as open source.
4) The programmer may not see the need for releasing the source.
    If the program is targeted at specific platform like Windows, where
    an overwhelming majority of the users doesn't know what a compiler
    is and even fewer know how to use it, why release source? (That
    was a rhetorical question, please don't answer it.) On the other
    hand on Linux, where some people only distribute as source, I do
    get annoyed every time I discover that the makefile is defect, or
    require some non-standard tools to build. This shows that it can be
    better to distribute as binaries rather than source. (Of course, the
    best thing is to distribute as both to ensure maximal compatibility).

In all these cases the project will be a fully functional, non free, program,
that won't fit your description of freeware as "guerrilla marketing, free
samples, hype generators etc."

 

License break down into two simple categories.

The creator either licenses the work in such a way

that the community benefits as much as the creator.

OR the creator licenses the work in such a way

that the creator maintains an advantage over teh

community.

True, but you are assuming that the project is targeted at
a programming community.

The first is about "Freedom", copyleft, public domain, etc.

The second is proprietary, all rights reserved, NC, ND, etc.

 

And proprietary isn't a four letter word.

But proprietary isn't "Free" either.

NC has nothing to do with Freedoms.

Anybody else who notice that "Free" actually is a four letter word :)
Sorry, I just couldn't resist it.

Seriously though, I agree that Free Software is better than freeware,
but I also think that freeware is a lot better than "all right reserved".

 

I see three important points in the spectrum here:
* Closed, i.e. "all rights reserved".
* Free use ("free beer", "freeware"). As in CC's ND clause.
* Modification allowed and possible. As in the GPL, or a CC without ND.

 

Absolutely not.

THere is closed and open. Free and Proprietary. that's it.

You either enable the creator more than the community,

or you enable the community as an equal to the creator.

NC and ND and ARR are all proprietary, closed.

The creator retains the majority rights to the work.

The creator alone can sell the work.

The creator alone can modify the work.

And in a world where transmission of the work is a sunk cost

over the internet, giving people the right to transmit the work

for free isn't giving them much at all.You're just giving them the

right because of the potential benefit it may bring to you.

 

Advertising.

You really see the world as black and white, don't you?
Have you ever considered the possibility of giving back a little
to the community, like a fully functional program. Besides I
don't like your wording give back as this implies that you got
something from the Free Software community to begin with.
It is not unlikely that all code in the project were written by
the developer himself. As some people use Windows and
Visual Studio for development it is not entirely impossible that
no Free Software were used even indirectly.

Just some thoughts

-Bjorn