Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

rob AT robmyers.org schrieb:
> Quoting Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>:
>
> > The recent proliferation of special
> > licenses for specific kinds of works just means that I won't know what a
> > license is anymore.
>
> CC have been very good about non-proliferation, reducing the number of  
> different licences with V2

OK, then CC is already moving to the right direction.

> and making the Wiki and Share Music
> licenses just badges for standard licenses.

That's better than having special licenses.
I'd still suggest sticking with the standard licenses. Remembering the 
meaning of BY-SA is easier than having to remember that WIKI is an alias 
for BY-SA.
I also don't quite see what purpose aliases would serve.

> I think the badges are
> retained so URLs don't break and there is an upgrade path for users of  
> those badges/licenses.

It's OK to keep them for compatibility reasons.
However, they are still on the page where people select a license.
I think the aliases should be removed from there.

> > The strategy itself seems to have consent, but there is dispute about
> > how fine-grained the quantization should be.
>
> Some people would like to see fewer quanta or the quanta modified to  
> better fit existing ways of working.
>
> But more quanta means more incompatibility which is bad.

Exactly.
I don't think it is possible to have a consensus. There are good reasons 
to go either way.
CC should decide on a specific level of quantization and communicate 
that. E.g. a statement like this: "We'll never offer more than five 
different license elements, so potential licensees will be able to 
remember them by heart and be able to immediately identify the licensing 
for any given work under a CC license."
After that, anybody who argues for an additional license will also have 
to argue what existing license should be made obsolete. That should 
reign in the natural drive to create additional licenses.

The limit of five above is just an example, it could equally well be 
three or six.
The maximum number of licenses in active use probably should never 
exceed seven, that's the number of concepts an average human can keep 
active in one's mind; in practice, CC's limit should probably be less 
because (a) not everybody has average mental capacity and (b) there are 
always some deprecated licenses floating around.

> > The third element is offering licenses that aren't really Commons
> > licenses but that give those who wish to try the CC licenses some
> > intermediate steps.
> >
> > This part of the strategy is controversial. The ND clause if far too
> > popular for the taste of many, including Lawrence Lessing himself.
> > There's also the example of the FSF that has made the strategic decision
> > not to offer an ND variant of the GPL, forcing the users of its licenses
> > to make a clear decision.
>
> The FSF didn't "make the strategic decision of not offering an ND  
> version of the GPL". The practical goal of the FSF is to support  
> software freedom. ND does not support this goal. The GPL is designed  
> to practically represent Stallman's ethics of Freedom, of which ND  
> most certainly isn't a part.

OK, stuff the "strategic decision" part.
The rest of the above stands though: since the FSF licenses don't have 
anything like ND or NC, i.e. *not* offering a "compromise license", 
people trying to tread a middle ground were forced to either go farther 
than they initially wanted, or not use an FSF license at all.

> > On the minus side, this strategy has prevented the FSF from creating a
> > license for those cases where ND would have been legitimate,
>
> This presupposes that there are legitimate cases for ND software,  
> which has not been established.

Probably not from RMS' point of view.
From my view: yes, there are situations where it does make sense.
Think software giveaways for marketing purposes. That's a perfectly 
legitimate thing to do (even RMS might agree with that, if I read some 
of his more recent statements correctly), yet the FSF doesn't offer a 
good license for that.

This kind of polarization might have been the Right Thing to do for the 
FSF, I don't know.
I *would* like to see a world where there were a license for such cases. 
It would not make the software free in the FSF sense, but with a clear 
license that covers this case, everybody would immediately see it and 
know what to make of it.
Currently, too many companies make up their own licenses and 
suggestively applying labels such as "Share", "Free", or "Open", and the 
FSF is forced to set the matter straight whenever this happens.

I'm not sure what CC's position is.

> > polarizing
> > the programmer community into those that are "pro" and "contra" and
> > preventing an unideological discourse.
>
> There isn't a "contra" community that wishes the FSF had produced an  
> ND GPL.

Possibly not ND.
Still, there's a proliferation of Open licenses. If the GPL had served 
the purposes of a wider audience, we'd have less of them.

> There is already an ND license available for software (MS-RL).  
> Microsoft wrote it. I don't understand why people who want an ND  
> software license from a well known organization don't just use this.

Probably because they don't trust Microsoft's intentions. (I certainly 
wouldn't, and wouldn't want to be associated with MS even by stealing 
their legal language!)
The license language may also have made it unsuitable for use by anybody 
but MS.
Third, the license is under Microsoft's copyright. I don't think I could 
legally use it.

Regards,
Jo