Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Björn Terelius wrote:
> On 4/25/07, Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2007-25-04 at 12:15 +0200, Björn Terelius wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>> If you want to use Creative Commons licenses for software, you should.
>> They work fine.
> 
> But the Creative Commons discourage that.

Quite a few of us are discouraging your whole concept. You don't listen
to *us*, so why are you so worried about CC's opinion on licensing? :-D

> Why is it such an unlikely outcome that CC would endorse their own
> licenses for software?

The CC discourages the use of CC licenses for software for two good reasons:

1) They contain no software-specific language (In particular, they say
nothing about the availability of source code. This matters for "free
software" -- IMHO it has no significance for freeware/shareware).

2) Shareware is an utter economic and technical failure, whereas Free
Software is rocking the planet. Which would you recommend to a potential
author: the proven success, or the proven failure? (Show me a
*shareware* or *freeware* operating system that can back Microsoft into
a corner).

Yes I know that both shareware and freeware have worked for some niche
cases, but they are really the worst of both worlds -- they combine the
lack of ability to recoup capital with the lack of ability to conserve
or distribute development costs. These really are niche cases -- it is
NOT the lack of standardized licenses that makes them so, but the
fundamental economics.

In short, shareware and freeware licensing of software is discouraged,
just because (most of the time anyway) it's really, really,
shooting-yourself-in-the-foot dumb. So that makes all the NC and ND
licenses poor choices (unless your project happens to fall into a tiny
niche, and if so, then you should be smart enough to figure that out
yourself).

OTOH, the By and By-SA licenses (which are analogous to BSD and GPL,
roughly speaking) are poor "free software" licenses because they do not
provide any guarantee of "open source", which is a stealth threat to a
FLOSS licensing model (you can get exploited by a commercial
organization releasing binary-only modifications of your work -- the
license means you can reverse-engineer, but it's too hard, so you've
effectively lost control).

Thus it's completely sound policy for CC to discourage licensing
software with their licenses.

On the other hand, if you are dumb enough to hitch your wagon to a
falling star (or smart enough that you can afford to ignore warnings
like mine), you might as well use CC-NC or CC-ND on your software,
because NO ONE CARES if you provide source.

"WE WILL NOT HELP YOU WRITE SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU LET US USE IT FREELY" --
that's the quid pro quo of free-licensed open source software. Don't
grant the rights, don't get the help. That's the way it works.

ND and NC software, like all proprietary software is an evolutionary
dead end (once you stop supporting it, it becomes obsolete and the
components cannot be reused in new projects). So why should we waste our
time on helping you create it? (Hint: you could PAY us -- but then where
does the money come from when you gave up the means to control per-copy
pricing?)

> (Mostly definition and conditions of source code, just like you
> said.)

Which won't matter. What's the point of ensuring copyleft on code nobody
can use? Nobody's taking that deal. We'll write our own replacement if
we really need it that badly. Or we'll live without. Or we'll use it as
is, then dump it onto the refuse pile like all other non-free software,
because the lack of freedom makes it an intrinsically disposable solution.

If you really do have a workable niche, then By-NC-ND will do everything
you require for a "shareware" license and By-ND for "freeware".

Just remember: "You have been warned".

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com