Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Benj. Mako Hill" <mako AT atdot.cc>]

<quote who="Terry Hancock" date="Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 09:45:16PM -0500">
> Many advocates of free software, including Richard Stallman, have
> expressed the opinion that the "ethical compulsion" to make software
> free is unique to computer programs (or perhaps more generally to
> "things of utilitarian rather than aesthetic value", as I would
> personally put it), and feel quite comfortable with the idea of
> conventional copyright-monopoly-based selling of aesthetic content.

And many advocates -- like myself -- disagree. Of course, we both agree
that the FSF's job is not to get into the middle of this debate except
where it pertains to documentation for software and computer programs
that we we agree need to be free.

> Now, I haven't done a scientific survey, but my gut feeling based on
> talking to software developers is that the *majority* opinion among
> *developers* (who are the people who determine what license software
> will be released under!) is the first one: that content licensing is and
> should be unaffected by the license of the software.

I think that's right. While I think that content should be free, I
don't believe that free software should be engineered or licensed so
that it can only produce free content. For many of the reasons you
describe.

This question as I understand it it is different though, and quite
specific. It is asking about whether GPL linking provisions extend to
things like images distributed alongside a program. I can't imagine that
this could he case but licensing AT gnu.org is the proper authority on
these issues and I suggest anyone mail that address sf you would like a
full answer on this or other GPL questions.

Regards,
Mako


-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako AT atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS

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