Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

Terry Hancock schrieb:
> 2) Shareware is an utter economic and technical failure, whereas Free
> Software is rocking the planet.

That depends.

The original idea died very quickly.
However, it quickly mutated into "try before you buy", and that has been 
a success.

> Yes I know that both shareware and freeware have worked for some niche
> cases,

That depends on what's a "niche". I don't think TextPad is a niche - in 
fact it was a mindshare leader for a while. (I'm still using it.)

> 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.

I can agree with that. In licensing terms it's indistinguishable from 
ordinary software anyway.

> 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).

Even the NC-ND license isn't shareware.
NC-ND means you can use the thing without paying for it. Shareware means 
you have to pay after trying it out (usually after a month or so, and 
this is usually technically enforced).

Returning to my original topic: it *might* be a good idea for CC to 
offer a shareware license, too. People who have used a shareware license 
from CC might consider a less encumbered one for their next project.
(Of course, there's also the problem that people who came with the 
intention of a free license might be diverted into using the shareware 
one. It's a tough question. Personally, I don't think that giving people 
less choices will make them choose the right ones...)

> 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).

Actually it's surprisingly easy.
Take a look at http://gpl-violations.org/ .
Most who violate a software license don't invest enough to cover their 
tracks. Probably not because they are dumb or something, but because the 
whole point is cutting corners, and having to work diligently to cover 
your tracks is the exact opposite of cutting corners.

Of course it's more difficult to find offenders if you're on your own.

> "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.

Mailing lists and newsgroups tend to offer advice without much of a quid 
pro quo. Checking the pro for the quid would be far too much bookkeeping 
to be attractive.

> 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).

Same with commercial software.
Which may or may not be an evolutionary dead end. Let's just wait and 
see, instead of trying to restrict software authors' choices just 
because *we* think it's a dead end.
The point of evolution is letting different kinds of genes compete. This 
means that evolutionary dead ends are a necessary by-product.

> 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.

I think that's exactly why somebody started writing an LGPL replacement 
for readline...

> 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.

For some kinds of software, that's actually OK.

> 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".

The problem is that it's still discouraged by CC.
And it's discouraged without giving the reasons, so nobody who isn't an 
international software law specialist can make his own informed decision.

Regards,
Jo