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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Greg London" <greglondon.1 AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL
  • Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:38:02 -0400



On 4/26/07, Björn Terelius <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I would like a more nuanced position on using CC for software.
 
 
NC/ND is safe for software, but ... the
program won't qualify as Free Software
 
That's accurate.
 
I would prefer having specailly adopted versions
of CC BY and SA for software, but there seem to
be a strong opposition against that.
 
Attribution is viewed by free software differently
than CC. FLOS software is generally happy to
have you keep copyright notices and similar
in place wherever they occur. CC's attribution
requires you to attribute in a way appropriate to
the medium, which means the names of all contributers
may have to "bubble up".
 
ShareAlike doesn't work because it doesn't have
a source code requirement (deadly). I also
believe that there are some GPL restrictions
that are specific to patents and tivoisation and
other things that are viewed as software traps,
but are not in the ShareAlike license. This is
often less obvious but can be sneakily deadly.
 
For ShareAlike being used for non-software projects,
there really is no need to worry about software patents.
 
CC could add those options, but it would probably
have to be a bolt on, since not all existing projects
would have source files. And a bolton would mean
yet another incompatible license.
 
There's also the issue of license compatibility with
other software projects. Unless the licenses are
practically identical, one might find it legally difficult
to mix CC-SA-SRC code with GNU-GPL code.
CC-SA-SRC-BY would probably not be compatible
with GNU-GPL. Or maybe it would.
 
But then if they are identical enough to be compatible,
then the question becomes, "why not just use GPL?"
 
There are a number of FLOS licenses that are
closer to public domain than GPL, and those licenses
are generally compatible with GPL.  But anything
more restrictive than GPL (BY maybe, or NC) is NOT
compatible with GPL.
 
So, for your license to play nicely with GPL,
you have to be at least as Free as GPL, or Free-er.
 
Now, if you're intent is to use something far more restrictive
than GNU-GPL, such as NC or ND, then compatibility
with GPL is probably NOT a concern. If you're using
NC or ND, then you're probably not woried about source
code because no one is going to be doing a lot of deriving
of your original code. If you're using NC-ND, then you
probably don't have to worry about software patents or
tivoization, because the person would probably either
end up having to derive the work to implement a patent
(which violates ND) or would be selling some hardware
which could tivoize the software (which violates NC).
 
So, if you're using NC-ND-BY on your software, then
you can probably use the licenses as-is.
 
The things that are missing from the CC licneses
are for protecting Free software projects to remain Free.
And since NC-ND-BY isn't Free and since your use
model isn't concerned about maintaining a Free community,
then you should be able to use NC-ND-BY without concern.
 
I hope that is a sufficiently nuanced explanation for you.
 
Greg
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com
 
 

 



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