Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 25 April 2007 03:44 pm, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Greg London schrieb:
> > They fixed their website, but the name had already
> > been launched, and they weren't willing to change it,
> > so we're stuck with that. And ever since, every once
> > in a while, some completely uninitiated person comes
> > along, and thinks that NC and ND have something to do
> > with doing something for the community. They don't.
>
> Now that's overstating the case.
>
> 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.

Well, in that case, ARR stuff is also a service to the public. Just less of a 
service than NC and ND. Making goods to sell in a free market is a public 
service.
>
> > 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.
> >
> > That was partly because CC didn't want to step on
> > the toes of a lot of organizations who had come to
> > the party years before they showed up.
>
> I can understand that...
>
> OTOH when I look at the GPL3 disagreements, I think a "less religious"
> approach would benefit many people.

To me they always seem to get heated when people want to rig things so as not 
to allow the four freedoms that the GPL seeks to ensure.

> And when I look at the spirit of the GPL, it's parallel to what CC tries
> to achieve - it's just more dogmatic. 

See, this is not so. Not as I see things. Do the CC licenses each some with a 
preamble stating their reason for being. Do the clauses in the license flow 
form the purpose stated in the preamble? A spectrum of rights? You are 
guaranteed to have that anytime you make more than one license where they 
differ from each other and from ARR. Right? Wrong?

> (Not that dogma is necessarily an 
> evil: sometimes you need to polarize to achieve anything, and dogma and
> evangelization are good tools for that. It's just that I don't like to
> be drawn into this kind of struggle.)
>
> > It's also partly because those software communities
> > get the distinction between community licenses (SA,BY)
> > and proprietary licenses (NC,ND). And they didn't want
> > CC barging in, muddying the water with proprietary
> > licenses, encouraging people to use them on software
> > projects, and doing so with a name like "Creative COMMONS".
>
> You say as if "proprietary" were a four-letter word.
>
> Well, usually it is.
> However, CC would give something new: a modular licensing kit.
> This not only fits well with a programmer's mindset, it would also fit a
> need that hasn't been addressed yet (let me give another conjecture why
> this wasn't done yet: because programmers have an instinctive dislike of
> anything that has to do with lawyers).
>
> > Most of the software organizations had fought for a long
> > time over what was "free" and what was not. And they
> > want CC to screw up the software communities by reseting
> > that discussion back to square one.
> >
> > I remember debates about whether "Freeware" was free
> > or not. Whether "Shareware" actually shared anything.
> > Whether NonCommercial use only licenses were of any
> > value. And they all happened years and years before
> > CC came to the party.
>
> Agreed.
> OTOH I think that the outcome was a muddied terminology.
> Even today, the FSF finds it necessary to repeat that it is "free as in
> free speech, not free as in free beer" - if I find myself clearing up
> terminology on a regular basis, I should really revisit my terminology
> instead of trying to impose my personal terminology on the general public.

Well, I would tend to agree except that I see deliberate attempts to muddy 
the 
waters by those who do not want the have software that ensures the four 
freedoms to succeed in the market place/ecology.

Unfortunately, english does not give us a better word. We could adopt libre 
and perhaps that would be a better solution. Languages which do not have the 
same word for libre and gratis do not have this issue, do they?
>
> Sorry for the rant.
> Just let me repeat that I share very much the FSF's goals, but I don't
> like their propaganda, and I even less wish to be associated with it, if
> only by GPLing my works...

A bit extreme perhaps, but you are free to do so.
>
> ... and for this discussion, let me state that there should be quite a
> number of people who think similarly. RMS and the FSF have been
> polarising, which means that there is a lot of people who'd jump ship if
> a viable alternative to the GPL existed. (I'm pretty sure that the GPL
> activists would throw a tantrum, of course, but I'm not sure that this
> would be bad for anybody.)

I don't think so, you would just need to come up with a better Free software 
license with the copyleft aspects intact and the only issue people would have 
would be whether the benefits of the better license were worth the trouble of 
the code license incompatibility.

Most of the ire I see directed at the GPL is directed to the copyleft aspects 
of it. It comes from people who want to build on the Free code without having 
to have what they end up with having to be Free in return.

Do you know of major objections to the GPL/FSF that do not relate to this?

If CC were to write a software license that also protected the four freedoms, 
they would catch the same flack for it. As it is, they catch flack for not 
taking these stands. You're gonna catch flack in life. Ya pays ya money an ya 
takes ya picks.
>
> >> 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.
> >
> > I don't understand this logic at all.
> > If Attribution is what you want, then
> > add -BY to whatever licese you use.
>
> Modifying an existing license is something that I wouldn't want to do
> without the help of an excellent lawyer with lots of international
> resources.

Sure. I haven't "fixed" BY-SA for this reason as well. (Amoung other reasons. 
A license used by a large number of people gets certain network benefits.)

> In other words, I'd do this kind of modification if Lawrence Lessing and
> his resources helped me with that :-)
> ... but not on my own. I'd not want to risk invalidating the license by
> tampering with something that I don't fully understand. This is simply
> too far outside my turf.
>
> > But NC and ND are proprietary licenses. They are for the
> > primary benefit of the creator. And when people talk about
> > GNU-GPL and NC-ND as if they were all part of the same
> > thing, when people say they want to use NC because it is
> >
> > "half-open"
> >
> > then people who've been around and know the difference
> > are going to be telling you just how wrong you are.
>
> I have yet to hear how wrong that would be.
> I have read a lot of advocacy (and, of course, flamage by the usual
> bunch of half-knowledgeable converts), but nothing substantial that I
> could repeat to explain the issue to outsiders.

Look at the link I provided to the CC history page. If they did not make this 
connection, I think you might find less objections or at least less 
passionate objections to such non-conforming uses.

http://creativecommons.org/about/history
>
> Do you have better resources? A URL would suffice.
>
> > They are not Half-Open or Half-FLOSS.
> > They are "mostly proprietary".
> > You want to use them as such, fine. go for it.
> > Just don't talk about them as if they are the same
> > to people who know the difference.
>
> I can't remember anybody on this list talking about them as if they were
> the same.
> Of course, company PR tends to muddy such distinctions.
>
> >> 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.
>
> No. They simply established a definition of "Free" that met their
> intentions, so that they could use an extremely positive terminology to
> describe their goals.
> It's just PR.
>
> > 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.
>
> Fully agreed.
> It's just that unless somebody comes along and creates another set of
> modular licenses (certainly not me), we'll have to stick with the way CC
> does it.

In a way. Those of us who create works and use CC licenses though have a 
stake 
in things and get to put our thoughts forward and try and have some impact on 
future directions.
>
> >> Let me quote the cc.org homepage:
> >> 'Creative Commons provides free tools
> >
> > That is 'free' as in 'free beer'. Not free as in speech.
> > The licenses can be used at no cost to you.
>
> Right.
>
> >> that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators
> >> easily mark their creative work with the freedoms
> >
> > Hm. That probably needs to get changed to "rights".
>
> Right. (No pun intended.)
>
> >> 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.
> >
> > You had it right the first time. All licenses are either
> > some flavor of proprietary or some flavor of free.
>
> I think that's too strong.
>
> 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.

These don't line up exactly right.

ND does not necessarily match up with freeware. I could put up a song with ND 
and sell it if you want copies from me.

GPL is a bit more than just CC with ND forbidden. NC is forbidden as well. I 
need to think some more to see if I need to add to that list.
>
> There are endless variations to the theme, of course, but these three
> are the key differences.
>
> > That you invoke "the freedoms THEY want it to carry"
> > reinforces my impression that you think NC and ND have
> > anything to do with "Free as in speech".
> >
> > NC and ND manage rights. Not freedoms.
>
> Freedoms start exactly at the points where the others' rights end. So
> anything that's about managing rights is also about managing freedoms.
>
> IOW "rights, not freedoms" is just a slogan, not an argument.
>
> Regards,
> Jo

all the best,

drew

-- 
(da idea man)