Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell AT gmail.com>]

On 9/30/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> > Even things like this are technically okay, they are violations of the
> > spirit of the license and the likely intentions of the licenses. As
> > such such actions should be avoided.. and may well be precluded by
> > future editions of the GPL should practices like that become
> > widespread.
>
> I disagree strongly.
>
> Many advocates of free software, including Richard Stallman, have
> expressed the opinion that the "ethical compulsion" to make software
[...]

I was specifically thinking of a particular case where someone took a
GPLed application then made an enhanced version which they wanted to
distribute under terms more restrictive than the GPL.  This isn't
permitted by the license because the spirit and presumably the
original author intends and the language of the license is designed to
preserve the freedom of the software.

In the case I was thinking of the author of this enhanced version has
attempted to skirt that requirements of the GPL by placing critical
program data (such as all the UI text) as well as a lot of secondary
data (documentation) under cc-by-nc-nd and claiming that removing it
and replacing it would be a violation of no-derivs.

I was only interested in pointing out that the subject can be complex
by trying to point out a case where the content can be easily be
argued to be an essential and inseparable part of the software, and
where incompatible licenses have been used in a hostile attempt to
'unfree' the software.

Perhaps you should have spent a couple seconds making sure you
understood me before going off on a rant.

To me it looks like you just wasted a lot of time attacking a straw
man position which may not be held by anyone sane at all.

You seem to think that you have some opponents that hold some rather
extreme beliefs. I've often found that kind of situation to be the
result of poor communication. I'd suggest you hash out your
differences with whomever you're arguing with, if I knew who they
were... as far as I can tell they aren't here.