Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

Greg London schrieb:
> 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.

And releasing under GPL is not for personal benefit?
Go tell MySQL AB. Or Red Hat.

Besides, if there's a choice between "release with some rights reserved" 
and "do not release at all", I'd like to see the former happen. Even if 
other programmers cannot copy and adapt the code, it can give them ideas 
- numerous algorithms have been reimplemented using the GPL.

Finally, there's nothing wrong in releasing stuff for personal benefit 
(as long as I'm not trying to take away more rights in the long run, but 
I don't see that happen with freeware).

> copyleft et al are barn raising licenses.

Dunno what "barn raising" is.

> NC and ND are types of commercial advertising,
> guerrilla marketing, free samples, hype generators, etc.

That's not illegitimate, I'd say.
Besides, if software is given away in this way, it's usually more useful 
than the other marketing material that I keep getting. And if it isn't, 
I can throw it away in an ecologically harmless fashion, that's better 
than the umpteenth cheap pen that will end up in the wastebin more often 
than not.

> > You say as if "proprietary" were a four-letter word.
>
> No. That's what you and others keep misunderstanding.
> I don't have a problem with proprietary works and licenses.
> I have a problem with proprietary works and licenses being
> described using the word "freedom".

Ah, then it's just definition problems.
Feel free to ignore that.

> But I don't slap CC-NC-ND-BY on it and try to tell people
> I'm doing them some big favor. I don't do that and say
> I'm giving them some "freedom".

Granting rights is giving freedoms. Nothing wrong with that terminology.
Not freedom as such. Freedom per se cannot be granted via a license, 
it's a condition established by society.

> 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 it is muddied, my objection is attempting to clear it up.

No, you're muddying it by trying to establish your personal definition 
of freedom.
Actually there is no such thing as "free software" in the sense of "free 
speech". Software is a thing, not a person, so it cannot have rights. 
The FSF is going *way* beyond the normal sense of the word here.

> > 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.
>
> 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.

You're constructing polarity where a wide spektrum exists.

I'm not sure that we even have a common base to base a discussion on.

> 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.
>
> > 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.
>
> That's just dismissing their definition so you can ignore it and insert 
> your own.

No.
I'm simply sticking with the dictionary definition of freedoms; see 
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/freedom .

The FSF made up their own definition of freedom as a technical term for 
a specific set of rights for software. You're following their 
definition, but that doesn't make their definition more correct (where 
"correctness" is simply common everyday use).

> Which is a fancy way of saying you reserve the right to make a word mean
> whatever YOU want it to mean, and to hell with all the work anyone has done
> before you.

That's exactly what I think the FSF has done.

> > 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're contradicting yourself, because

> The creator retains the majority rights to the work.

"majority" is a shade-of-grey measure.
What's a "majority" of rights? Rights aren't equals (or even 
equivalents) that you can count to determine a majority.

> 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're ignoring facts.

First, redistribution isn't the only relevant right; even the most 
restrictive license gives the right to use the work for personal 
purposes. And don't tell me that using software for free isn't a 
substantial right!

Second, you're alleging that every release that isn't full GPL is "just 
for advertising". This is a remarkable ignorance of the reasons why one 
might want to distribute software. I have seen more than one person 
distributing software under the rough equivalent of BY-ND, and not for 
any personal advantage (beyond, maybe, a Donate! button on their 
webpage, something that GPL projects can have, too, so there).

> > 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.
>
> Sure. If it's just a slogan and the words are equal,
> then it shouldn't harm you to change the words.
>
> But that argument is a smoke screen.
> The words aren't equal to you.
> One has more emotional pull to it than the other.
> one implies more than the other.

That's exactly why the above is a slogan.
It has strongly emotional overtones, but not factual content.
In fact, taken at face value, the entire thing is a contradiction in 
terms, since freedoms (as a plural) are just rights.

> one makes it sound like you're doing more for the users
> than the other.

Actually I prefer the term "rights".
"Freedoms" is simply misleading (though I have been misled into using 
the word "freedom" occasionally, particularly when adapting to the 
terminology of other people in the discussion).

> And you want that, even though the word has a very
> specific and entirely different meaning in the history
> of the entire FLOSS commnity.

Well, yes, that's exactly the thing that I don't like about the FSF: 
that they abuse a very emotional word for something that's not too 
emotional after all (except for those who are into programming).

That's an effective PR strategy initially, but I think they should drop 
it when dealing with people who are not programmers or otherwise 
emotionally attached to the way programs are written. It's effective at 
raising eyebrows, not at convincing people.

Regards,
Jo