Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Mark Brown" <broonie AT gmail.com>]

On 5/11/07, Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org> wrote:

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.

It's probably also worth pointing out that the FSF didn't start with as much of a blank slate as Creative Commons did - there were already existing licenses covering the cases that the FSF would be willing to endorse.

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.

Personally I would be surprised if the people creating these licenses would be willing to use something which made it clear what the license was trying to do. It usually appears that a large part of the reason for these licenses is to appear to be offering more than is actually being offered so clarity isn't exactly a priority.

> 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.

My impression is that a lot of this is about people wanting to cook up something for themselves and historical things with people who were more isolated from the community than they normally would be today.