Creative Commons Launches Today

Luke Francl writes "On December 16, the Creative Commons is unveiling their commons licenses. Well, their website is up a little early Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages debating the merits of the GPL verus the OPL versus the FDL verus the public domain ad infinitum. By answering three simple questions, the Creative Commons web application selects an appropriate license for you. You can give it a try at the Choose a License page. They've also got a list of all the Creative Commons licenses." Peter Wayner has released his book Free For All under the license.

Comments

Slight problem here

[henben]

Anyone noticed that the Free For All book doesn't specify which Creative Commons license it's been released under?

Re:Slight problem here

[stubear]

Why do mocerators insist on modding up comments solely based on their contreversial nature? It took me all of two seconds to find this:

The electronic version is now covered by the Creative Common's license permitting non-commerical distribution of complete copies. (To be specific: Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License)

on the "Free for All" website. Come on. Not only was the parent an idiot, at least one moderator has propegated this bullshit.

Re:Slight problem here

[henben]

The (To be specific:...) was added after I submitted the comment! Seriously...

Whoever just updated the site, please confirm this - I fear for my Karma.

Re:Slight problem here

[henben]

Look, the Google cache proves it.

Nice idea....

[Fallen Kell]

Its pretty good idea. Easy yo use, and tells you why it chose that license as well as gives an easy to understand description of the license as well as the full detailed license text.

Again well thought out idea that will hopefully help many people use more open licenses now that they can easily find which one to use.

endless debate

[anonymous loser]

Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages debating the merits of the GPL verus the OPL versus the FDL verus the public domain ad infinitum

Because, after all they don't want to impinge on /.'s territory.

warm and fuzzy

[stonebeat.org]

reading through GNU and GNU FDL "license text" gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling :)

Re:warm and fuzzy

[Anonymous Coward]

no, my friend, that's the clap

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Interesting

[jimmyCarter]

It's interesting -- definitely a way to simplify the daunting task of picking a license. I recently began to roll my first SourceForge project and can tell you the license-selection step is very intimidating.

Then again, I don't have the GPL stitched on my pillowcase like some of you. ;)

Re:Interesting

[jpt.d]

License before or after you have a project?

Re:Interesting

[jimmyCarter]

Before I could move any code, I had to select a license from a list of about 30. Read through each of them and 4 days later you can make a selection.. I'm still new at it, and I'm sure I can always change the license later.

i agree

[Frothy Walrus]

the mod says 'flamebait' but my brain says 'spot-on'. Linux nerds have singlehandedly turned the geek community, once thriving with creativity and individuality, into a sea of obnoxious RMS-gamahuching dweebs -- who think they're cool .

i liked it better before they came around.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[DarkKnightRadick]

Well, whats the purpose of having more then one open source liscense if they all are basically the same? Why not just take the best parts of them all and include them in the next revision of the most popular one?

Gallagher *-O-Matic

[satsuke]

Would the results of that page be called a
Legalize-O-Matic ?

Sledge-O-Matic, not just for spraying audiences anymore!!

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

All well and good, but what does the FSF think of all this? Their opinion matters rather more to me than some "Creative Commons" upstart.

I would also note that depending on the choices you make, you can easily end up with:

(i) a non-Open-Source compatible, non-DFSG-Free license, but one more akin to "source-available proprietary" -"Shared Source" or "Community Source" in Micro$oft/$un newspeak

or

(ii) a license that is Open Source, but not GPL compatible (e.g. recreates the old-style-BSD license, or prohibits commercial, non-proprietary use, which is permitted by the GPL).

This really muddies the waters further, not less, by blurring the distinction between Open and pseudo-open source.

Not really surprising given the O'Reilly involvement - they're known MS-apologists.

Re:Hmmm...

[Planesdragon]

This really muddies the waters further, not less, by blurring the distinction between Open and pseudo-open source.

Actually, it puts up walls and nicely cuts the muddy water from the clean water from the caustic clear acid.

Not EVERYONE wants a sticky copyleft free-as-in-fanatical license. The moral argument for such licenses should be made on its merits, not through doubletalk and rote intimidation.

Creative Commons could do a bit better if it linked to licenses that each selection was compatible with--and a bit better if it had a reverse lookup, where you could list the license of the source you want to use and you see your options for other licenses.

Re:Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear you may confusing "Open Source" with "Free Software" a la the FSF.
I don't think Stallman will be too chuffed with your blurring of the distinction between the two...

Re:Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative Commons could do a bit better if it linked to licenses that each selection was compatible with--and a bit better if it had a reverse lookup, where you could list the license of the source you want to use and you see your options for other licenses.

Something like this?

It's not about religion

[SteweyGriffin]

It's not about religion
Nor is it a matter of ethics.
It's not about love, caring, thoughtfulness, kindness, compassion, vision, hope, intellect, wisdom, or sharing.

It's about feeding my kids.

And I'm sorry, and I'm sure I'll get flamed for this for going against typical Slashdot Zealout creedo, but the license that someone uses for their drawings or computer code or music tracks doesn't mean jack in the long run.

So I'll continue to get paid for the hard work I do and I'll continue to raise my kids the way they should be, and give them whatever they need when they need it.

I'm a father for Christ's sake, not the Pope.

Re:It's not about religion

[jon_eaves]

It's funny, you can spend time posting stuff on /. but can't find time to assist an Open Source project.

You could help with documentation, you could help with testing, you could help in their community assisting others.

That's what sharing is all about, making choices that aren't always just about you.

Who's going to teach your kids that ?

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

SteweyGriffin is a troll. He posts the same type of crap everywhere. Please mod him into oblivion so that he posts at -1. Moderators should take the history of someone's posts into consideration before moderating. Only then can they see the trend of his trolling and flamebaiting.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what sharing is all about, making choices that aren't always just about you.

Oh give me a fucking break, dude. Say it with me:
Every human act is selfish.

We all do stuff because it helps us. It makes us feel good about ourself, or gets us credibility, or makes us famous, or makes us money, etc. See?

Re:It's not about religion

[slim]

I don't *think* you're trolling, but you *are* missing the point. There is more than one way to make money from software, and some of them are perfectly compatible with Open Source software.

Do you think IBM release their contributions to Apache, or to Eclipse for reasons of "love, caring, thoughtfulness, kindness, compassion, vision, hope, intellect wisdom or sharing"? No, clearly IBM's bottom line is profits for their shareholders.

Open Source *can* be akin to volunteer work, but it isn't always. Alan Cox gets paid good money for hacking the Linux kernel.

On the other hand, would you really want your kids to see the message you've just posted "it's OK to compromise any ethics you have, if it helps you and yours"? Would you care to take your kids into a charity shop, to watch you explain to the volounteer help the folly of their ways? Is that "raising your kids the way they should be"?

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, you can spend time posting stuff on /. but can't find time to assist an Open Source project.

Perhaps he has a job, unlike you. You probably spend your entire day posting to Slashdot AND doing work for free for a volunteer group/project).

Re:It's not about religion

[kingkade]

who says he doesn't do both? jumping to conclusions makes you look silly.

Re:It's not about religion

[oliverthered]

Umm... so what do I do then?

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't *think* you're trolling, but you *are* missing the point.

He is trolling. Take a look at his history and you will see several posts along the same vein. All of them have like 20 moderations - half positive, half negative. He posts under several different names and is manipulating slashdot moderators by posting drivel he knows will be modded up.

Re:It's not about religion

[3141]

Every human act is selfish.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What about if someone threw themselves in front of a car to save a little child? It would not do any of what you say, except perhaps get them in the local newspaper for a day, which they would not even know about.

Sometimes people just do things because they think it's the right thing to to.

Re:It's not about religion

[LMCBoy]

Every human act is selfish.

This statement is provably false, and the fact that you believe it vehemently enough to post it in bold-face preceded by "say it with me", is just sad. I really hope you figure out that it's wrong someday.

Re:It's not about religion

[oliverthered]

But they fealt so good about saving the child even for a little while. See selfish....

How about someone that's so depressed that the kill themselves to save the rest of the world from what they see as there evilness.

what about someone who won't accept a gift because there afraid that it might make someone impoverished.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you feed your kids? Maybe you should just let the little bastards starve, after all, they can get jobs of their own. Or maybe you do know something about "love and kindness" after all.

Though I am trying to figure out what your post has to do with licenses. Are you a programmer or something? Is somebody putting a gun to your head and demanding you work for free? Or are you just playing the "food on the table" card that always comes up in discussions of copyright law? Help us out here.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, bravo!

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

... Slashdot Zealout ...

That's Zealot, you insensitive clod!

Re:It's not about religion

[m_cuffa]

" Every human act is selfish. " That's garbage. Saying 'every X is Y' says nothing whatsoever about X. It just changes the definition of Y. If genuine charity is in your view a selfish act, then your definition of "selfish" is very different from mine and I'd guess most other people. There are NO universal laws of human nature.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not about your vorsprung deutch technique yer know. and it's not about you joggers who go round and round and round.

either.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove it then. He is absolutely right. I thought everybody understood this as fact. It is actually pretty much common sense. Of course, saying selfish might be misleading. Self serving is a better fit. We do thinks to make ourselves feel good, to be proud, to feel important, to feel superior, etc.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's about feeding my kids.

If you're having difficulty feeding your kids, consider getting a
proper job where payment isn't a problem. Clearly your an
inadequate parent if you're prepared to let your kids starve just
because you're too bone idle to pick up a hod or wait on tables.

Re:It's not about religion

[mstyne]

Like a pimped out computer case? Yeah, you're hurting all right.

Re:It's not about religion

[kingkade]

There are NO universal laws of human nature.

Except for that one ;-)

Re:It's not about religion

[ntk]

The mother of my child wrote this piece about how the attacks on the public domain will affect our daughter.

You may not want to give anyone else's children your work for free, and I understand that. But when someone else offers *your* child a gift for free, and gives you a chance to work one less hour for your children, and perhaps spend one more hour with them instead - well, I'd grab that gift and say thankyou, too.

(And if you don't like the moral aspect, here's a more practical reading: I think it sets a good example for the kids to follow. So, at least, after you've given them all your hard effort for free, they don't turn around and say: "Well, the generosity you showed to me as a child doesn't mean jack in the long run. It's about my feeding *my* kids, grandpa. I'm a descendant, for Christ's sake, not the Pope.")

Re:It's not about religion

[MSZ]

selfish != for material gain

"Genuine charity" is selfish, because makes giver feel good or maybe superior to those, who don't give.

When you give money (or services or...) to whatever cause you deem worthy, don't you feel good?

Re:It's not about religion

[m_cuffa]

You're just proving my point by redefining the word selfish - you think "feeling good" about something makes the original act a selfish one. I disagree. But the point is this: We could go on and on arguing and you would go on and on redefining your definition until your definition of selfish would be "any human act". And you'd end up with a statement of the form A = A, which of course is true. How brilliant!

Re:It's not about religion

[bludwulf]

Altruism.

Re:It's not about religion

[jon_eaves]

While I'm not as vehement as some of the other posters, I thought I'd reply, though I don't normally reply to ACs.

My words were chosen quite carefully. When I said "aren't always _just_ about you".

Sure, you can view any form of sharing/charity as selfish because "you" get something out of it, and that's certainly the truth. People do feel good about it.

However, the hair-splitting part is, "what's the motivation". I believe if your motivation is to help/share/assist others primarily, then that's sharing/charity.

If your motivation is "I'll feel good/get something out of this by sharing" then that's selfish.

Of course, people are welcome to disagree with my POV after all, this is a pretty personal issue.

Re:It's not about religion

[nathanh]

Every human act is selfish.

If every human act is selfish then your definition of the word "selfish" is meaningless.

To state it another way, there must exist some human acts that are altruistic in order to give meaning to those human acts that are selfish.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

This is something that especially those people like to believe who want to justify their more-selfish-than-usual behavior. Often the same people who believe that this is obvious because people have to be selfish for evolutionary advantage, that only selfishness can drive the free markets towards progress. All of which is not quite completely true.

For one thing, there is an evolutionary advantage to helping group survival as well as individual survival. IIRC there was a book published on this recently, but I think it is obvious enough if you think about it.

Even if you deny the existence of altruism, there are plenty of behavioral motivators besides selfishness - habits, addictions and routines, for one thing.

Re:It's not about religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Did someone try to force you to work for free? Do you think other people on slashdot work for free? Or are you just afraid of the very existence of communities willing to share their creations?

Open source contributors fall into plenty of categories:

- Those who are paid to work on open source projects. There are probably more than you think.

- Those who do something else for a living, and contribute to open source projects in their spare time.

- Those who work on proprietary software for a living, and contribute to open source projects in their spare time.

- Those who don't currently work (e.g. students) and contribute in their spare time or as part of their studies.

However, if there exists a group of people who spend time that they'd otherwise use for paid work contributing to open source projects and are broke because of it, I know I've never heard of them. Maybe there is a small group of people like this, but I think that the slashdot community is more likely to consider them insane than admirable.

What contributors have in common, though, is that they like contributing to the projects. They aren't people who feel pressured into it by their peers.

Who exactly is telling you that you shouldn't be able to provide for your family, one way or another?

BTW: Exaggerating the perceived "oppositions" argument and then attacking the exaggerated, incorrect argument is known as a strawman. Whether this was intentional or you just missing the point, I don't know.

Friends of the Earth license.

[oliverthered]

hmmm... I wanted the
'you can do anything you like with this so long as you don't vote for or support George W Bush.'

Looks like I'll have to keep the formula for philosophers stone to my self for a while.

Re:Friends of the Earth license.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because I wanted the license that said you could do anything you wanted so long as you insured dependence on foreign oil.

Re:Friends of the Earth license.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you don't realise is that thy've got very deep pipes in the middle east, so deep that there taking oil from alaska.

Gray-suited legions of evil.

[DoraLives]

Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages...

This stuff doesn't strike me as being particularly lawyerproof.

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[jon787]

Thats cause they show you the plain text version, you should also be able to download the legalese version.

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[Surak]

Um...according to this, some of the people involved include Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle and some other folks that you may or may not have heard of. These are some of the brightest legal minds and IP experts in the country.

I'd use a license from these people WELL before I'd ever use a license written by RMS.

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

a license written by RMS

You ended your sentence too early. It seems you forgot to add then checked thouroughly, over a period of many years, by an office fulle of well paid IP lawyers at the Free Software Foundation.

What, you think that the GPL was written on the back of a napkin?

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[Reziac]

Check out the "long version" -- that contains typical legalese, in terms very similar to every other EULA out there. While IANAL and I didn't read thru every single clause, it looked to me like they hit the usuals.

BTW, love the subject line :)

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You got the GPL tattoed on your ass or something?

Re:Gray-suited legions of evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the current GPL is not the first version.

The current version has been reviewed, quite extensively, by lawyers, over several years.

Since he is peripherally involved in the Open Source community, Lawrence Lessig himself would probably have pointed out any severe problems with the GPL. I'm sure he has read it very carefully.

Who will use this?

[areThoseMyFeet]

Although this seems like a fine idea in theory, I am having difficulty imagining many situations where people would use it, which would be useful to others.
It is not going to replace copyright for music or books (I realise these aren't mentioned, I'm just trying to think of some possible use - theirs are pretty crap and unlikely) for example - the industry wouldn't touch it for obvious reasons.
If it takes off at all, it would be for the benefit of amateurs only, but then, what's the point?

Re:Who will use this?

[signer]

Let's look at an example: You're an independent musician, trying to build a following. You play gigs and even make a little money. You are not an "amateur" but you are not signed with a major label, either. You release a CD, but you want to make one track available for publicity purposes, such as use by net radio stations. You release that track under whichever license you prefer (for example, the "attribute it to me" license) and make it available. Now you've made it clear that people who might want to publicize your work are allowed to post this track wherever they want, as long as your name is attached. Hopefully, if it's a good track, your name will get out (via the "attribute it to me" license) and your following will increase. You don't need to make special arrangements with each person who wants to play your song.

Basically, you just increased your potential sales via word-of-mouth exponentially, without anyone involved having to worry about whether or not they're breaking the law or having to contact you for explicit permission. This isn't about "the industry"; they've already designed their business models around the traditional approach to copyright. This is for artists.

Re:Who will use this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it takes off at all, it would be for the benefit of amateurs only, but then, what's the point?

the benefit of amateurs..
thats the point. unless you forgot that the world doesnt revolve around megaconglomo-corporations.(only the laws do)

Re:Who will use this?

[aborchers]

You look at the CC purely through the filter that the **AAs have put on your eyes when you see it as "for the benefit of amateurs only". The distinction between amateur and professional in the creative world is created by corporations that want you to believe that nothing shipping without a major label, studio, or publisher's brand on it can be worthwhile.

The point is that CC is defining a licensing alternative for creators to use independent of signing their life and work away to corporate masters. I applaud their efforts as a reasonable step in freeing artistic works from corporate control. Perhaps with a strong legal infrastructure such as this in place (let's face it, artists typically don't pay much attention to such matters, which is how so many of them end up paupers while the label/studio/publisher profits from their work) we will finally start to see the power of corporate copyright diminish and true (I never thought I'd say this word with a straight face) empowerment of the creators.

Re:Who will use this?

[KjetilK]

If it takes off at all, it would be for the benefit of amateurs only, but then, what's the point?

My How to use a compass will be available under a CC lisence (Attribute-ShareAlike) or FDL or something similar.

I got an e-mail from a guy who was about to quit is job and go into teaching outdoor skills full-time. He needed good instruction materials, and so he wondered if he could use my material professionally. I said yes, and told him about copyleft and Creative Commons. He thought it was brilliant. When I release this stuff, this means that there will be at least one professional using and contributing back to the project, a big win for everyone.

It's not about amateurs. It is about basing economy on common goods.

Re:Who will use this?

[mr_data_esq]

Although this seems like a fine idea in theory, I am having difficulty imagining many situations where people would use it, which would be useful to others.

It's not just a fine idea in theory: it's a fine idea in practice. This is exactly the kind of thing I want for releasing my music.

I currently labour in obscurity, and one day, when I release another album, I'll probably want some way to promote it - that is, get as many people as possible to hear it, on the theory that a few of them will want to hear it again. One good way for me to do this is to release my music into the world (the Internet is an ideal way to do this), and let it spread by word-of-mouth (word-of-ear?). If somebody hears my stuff and likes it, he very well might buy a CD from me. It's what I'd do myself, and I don't think I'm all that weird.

The Creative Commons licences look like excellent candidates for this. I can use them to declare, legally and explicitly, that people can trade my music. If even ten people buy CDs as a result, I won't complain, since I'm not exactly making a lot of money off my stuff right now. ;) (And that's fine. I decided not to make music to make money. I became an engineer instead.)

Furthermore, I quite like the idea of people taking samples from my stuff and making other things with it. I'd be very flattered if they did. The "derivative works" licence allows me to declare that I explicitly give people permission to do that.

Suppose that Dr. Dre, for example, happens to hear a track of mine, and loops part of it into an Eminem hit or something. A certain small percentage of the people who hear it will like it (the sample, I mean), and will want to know where he got that sample from. They'll find out that it was me, because Dre will - in theory at least - have to give me credit. Then they'll order a CD - and a small percentage of Dre's listenership is still a very large number of people. Therefore, when they buy CDs, I'll get rich and famous :D.

Of course, that example is completely hypothetical and not a little far-fetched. But it illustrates one very practical reason why I consider the sampling of my work a good thing for me. Sampling, to me, is something like free promotion, to say nothing of flattery. The Creative Commons licences allow me to explicitly grant people permission to do it.

Re:Raise your hand

[Anonymous Coward]

ok.

just let me figure out how to show my hand raised by using text.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[henben]

Well, the GPL covers situations that might arise with code but not with other types of content. e.g. the requirement that source code is made available, and is in the preferred form for making modifications.

They're similar in spirit, but the GPL is more specifically tailored to computer code.

feeding my kids

[oliverthered]

feeding your kids to what?
the big nasty do down the road.

I don't believe some of you non religious, unethical, loveless non caring, thoughtless , horrible, evil, blinded, hopeless, stupid, unknowlageable , selfish people.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[Mr_Silver]

How is their ShareAlike License different from GPL?
ShareAlike license -- the one you get if you click just the "sharealike" option when selecting licenses.
And if it is not, what was the need to create another license with the same conditions?

Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not be designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc.

There is a pretty good FAQ too.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[Burdell]

The ShareAlike License looks like it requires that any modifications be distributed under the ShareAlike license (and no other). The GPL only requires that the key provisions of the GPL be followed. If you want to distribute your derivative work under a different (but compatible) license, that is acceptable under the GPL but not under the ShareAlike License. Without reading the fine print, that requirement may actually make the ShareAlike license incompatible with the GPL (as it puts additional restrictions).

In soviet russia..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. your hand raises you !!!

Re:-1 Offtopic

[jpt.d]

You haven't been reading what people have been saying about this have you? There is nothing stopping them from using binary in XML. If they don't then great, yes it wouild be open, but if they do use binary you can forget it.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that it is GPL-incompatible, or so that people mistake Creative Commons licenses with the "no derivates", "requires attribution", or "no commercial use" clauses for real open-source.

Hint: Those three can make your project more like MS shared source or Sun community source than real open source.

MS would even be able to say "look, we're participating in the Creative Commons" while simultaneously NOT really being Open Source or Free Software AT ALL.

Great ideas, but...

[levik]

While these three questions may not cover all the conceivable situations, they probably take into account about 90% of the cases you can run up against (with the notable exception of the "link-only" option)

I wonder however, if people may shy away from this great resource simply because it lacks the exposure and "clout" of the GPL? That would truly be a unfortunate outcome.

Cool but....

[RyoSaeba]

That sounds like a nice idea at first sight.
But i think the trouble is that this selection system will ultimately invite people not to think of the differences between the licences.
Fine, it's nice to select a license quickly, but people won't be able to understand why choose this license instead of another one, or the issues related to each type of licences....
People will prefer this selection method instead of balancing pros & cons (i admit it can sometimes be a real pain if you release a lot of projects), thus losing track of the differences between all the licences...

Re:Cool but....

[jallen02]

Well, I looked at their options. I think it actually simplifies the process of weighing the benefits and drawbacks. If I have a project, I have in mind the kind of ways I want to let other people use my software. Regardless of whatever license is out there, I know my intent with a project. I know how I want others to be able to use it. As a creator you should definitely know at least what your goal is with the project and how, if at all, you want to let the source be used.

Having a set of options, if they meet my criteria for how I want my project to be used makes it much easier. If it covers the key points of what I want a license to cover why should I have to worry with the gory details of a license if one already exists?

I think it is really more of a question that people should think more clearly about how they want their projects to be used. It is not really a question of licensing. Licensing is just a way to see your "vision" come to fruition. I don't see license as what set off a vision, just a means to a particular end.

Jeremy

Re:Cool but....

[epukinsk]

That's why told then when they invented parchment! No one will have to remember or understand history... they'll just put it down on paper and forget it. Eventually they won't be able to hold things in their head or think at all!

And look! I was right.

What about the rest of the world?

[jb_nizet]

OK, so this web site gives licenses for the US, in english.
Are the licenses applicable outside the US?
If so, wouldn't it be nice to provide the license text in other languages (at least the main ones: French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.)?

JB.

Re:What about the rest of the world?

[malarkey]

Just Babelfish it: (English to Espanol and then back)

2. The Right Rights Of Uso. Nothing thinks about this license to reduce, to limit, or to restrict the no rights that appear of right use, the first sale or other limitations in the exclusive rights of the owner of copyright under applicable law of copyright or other laws. 3, License Grant. According to the terms and to the conditions of this license, the licenciador by this means grants (for the duration of copyright applicable) a world-wide, right license to him frees, non-exclusive, perpetual to down exercise the rights in the work according to the indicated thing: in order to reproduce the work, to incorporate the work in or more collective works, and to reproduce the work according to the built-in thing in the collective works; in order to distribute to copies or phonorecords of, it exhibits public, it realícese public, and it makes public by means of a digital audio transmission the work including according to the incorporated thing in collective works; The aforesaid rights can be exercised in all means and formats if now they are known or from now on devised. The aforesaid rights include the right to make the modifications such as they are technician necessary to exercise the rights in other means and formats. All the rights nonexpress granted by Licensor are not reserved by this medio.reserved.

Not Bad.

Re:What about the rest of the world?

[Hayzeus]

Not bad. Now try it in Japanese...

Re:What about the rest of the world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well for fuck's sake, here they are offering a free service, and you've got to go and whine about it.

Maybe they COULDN'T AFFORD TO GET IT TRANSLATED. Maybe if you got off your pimply ass and helped them translate to one or more of those languages (you do know them all, right?) they might be able to offer them too.

Maybe if more people would quit fucking whining about gratis services, the world would be a better place.

Re:-1 Offtopic

[NineNine]

Is binary in XML up to spec? I've never heard of such a thing. They said they're gonna be 100% compliant with the XML specs.

License names

[Xner]

Too bad their licenses have ended up with awful names that are quite the mouthful.

Congratulations!

You've chosen the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Makes the Sun Community Source License seem simple.

Amen

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I don't know why this licence crap comes up again and again on the front page. Boring & irrelevant IMHO in the scheme of life.

Re:-1 Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun StarOffice and OpenOffice go one better: They store documents as Zipped XML ! All the advantages of MS Office 11, plus compression! Since Last Year!

Wow!

Clueless. Go learn to troll instead of flamebaiting.

Re:This is great news for the ODK community

[Anonymous Coward]

AHKK. Please don't mod up this post. Every article has at least one post about OpenDK. This is a troll who is trying to attract people to his site/project.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[bgarcia]

How is their ShareAlike License different from GPL?

The major difference will be that ShareAlike and GPL code cannot be mixed, since each requires the resulting work to only be available under the same license.

Because of this, I don't see why they thought it necessary to create a new, almost identical license.

Re:-1 Offtopic

[morgajel]

MS is the FIRST Office suite vendor to store documents as XML
or really? besides, microsoft has the OPTION (read: not it's primary, default format)

openoffice has been xml for quite a while now, and I'm sure there are others as well.

oh yeah, why do you have me listed as a foe? hope I'm not raining on your parade.
sorry man, my bad.

Text? Binary? Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter. You can easily UUencode or base64 a properietary binary COM object (or anything else) into text form and shove it in a CDATA field.

Totall Useless

[Monkelectric]

I can't use this, I want to go big time and there's no checkbox for "Jealously guard your copyright by, bribing senators, buying laws, destroying civil liberties in your country, and harming the customers who support you,"

Good but not good enough

[Danta]

Still too much legalese for my liking. Just look at their Public Domain declaration. Give me a break.

I think no license is user-friendly if it can't be understood and bothered to be read by a 10-year old. Consider the fact that legally ANYONE SHOULD read and understand the license of every single piece of software they use and the usage agreement of every single website they visit that has one. In present time this is simply impossible.

Re:Good but not good enough

[Idarubicin]

Legalese is a necessary evil. English is a pretty slippery language, and to produce a binding contract, the terms must be clear and precise.

On Slashdot and elsewhere, people frequently bandy about terms like theft and copyright infringement as if they were equivalent; in a strictly legal sense they most certainly are not. (I will leave aside the moral issues.) Similarly, people will often use theft, burglary, and robbery interchangeably. Again, beyond sharing the basic idea of taking something that isn't yours, these crimes are very different in nature.

Try going before a court with a well-intentioned but poorly-written contract or license. See how far you get. You should only need to get bitten once before you gain an appreciation of legalese.

Analogy for /.ers: if you feed gcc a text file explaining in plain English the program that you want, will it work? Or do you have to follow rules of syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, understanding that the system only works if you are explicit and precise in your use of language?

Re:Good but not good enough

[sir99]

if you feed gcc a text file explaining in plain English the program that you want, will it work? Or do you have to follow rules of syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, understanding that the system only works if you are explicit and precise in your use of language?

Yes, but I would find the C version of a program easier to understand than a fully-specified-in-English version analogous to legalese. Thus your analogy suggests a possible improvement to me. It seems to me that a language just for legal documents (Legal++?) would be more efficient than writing all that incomprehensible crap known as legalese. Sure, you'd have to learn the language to understand it, but the same is practically true of legalese.

Re:Good but not good enough

[Danta]

I agree that it often is necessary to express the license rather explicitly, in order for it to be court-proof. However, how does someone feel to publish something under a license and knowing that over 95% of the users will never read nor understand your license, even though they pressed the "I Agree" button. Sure, it gives you the power in court, but I think it is asocial in a way too. I don't know how or if this problem will ever be solved, but I have yet to be convinced that some lawyer actually made an effort to simplify a license agreement.

How often do poeple on Slashdot talk about turning their friends, kids, granny to Linux? Have they ever thought about making them read the GPL before they touch any Linux?

I for one would suffice with a license somewhat in this wording:

"You may do with this software and sourcecode whatever you want, as long as you give me credit for anything that is based on or makes use of this software."

I think this is a lot more considerate than Creative Common's version of basically the same license.

Re:Good but not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, the original objection stands.

To place something in the public domain, there is no reason to write anything other than:

"This work is hereby placed in the public domain."

Re:Good but not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

You may do with this software and sourcecode whatever you want, as long as you give me credit for anything that is based on or makes use of this software.

What do you consider giving credit? It can be anything from a nigh hidden reference to a change in name (GNU/Linux). Will you accept even an almost hidden reference. If not, you should be more specific.

Bad for Open Source

[spakka]

This proliferation of licences will harm the adoption of Open Source / Free Software by commercial organizations. It's hard enough to persuade management that GPL'd software is safe to use, or to distinguish between LGPL and GPL. Now we have a dozen new licences which will need to be scrutinized by the legal department.

Re:Bad for Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't there a unique custom license for each piece of proprietary software anyway? They already have to go through a lot of crap, so this is not an effective argument.

Re:Bad for Open Source

[kirkjobsluder]

I didn't think that Creative Commons had much of a software focus. The GPL and the LGPL work great for software, but work less well for other creative works. What qualifies as source code for photographs of forest mushrooms, or a recording of an jazz jam session? What about art exhibitions or knit sweater instructions?

Software producers should probably use one of the many open-source software licenses which are customized to the nature of software as a creative work. However, there is a lack of viable liberal licenses for reseach, literary, visual and musical works.

Re:Bad for Open Source

[Bnonn]

These licenses are as much designed for software as the GPL was designed for literature. Now do you understand?

Multiplication of instances beyond necessity

[garyok]

Is it just me, or was the world complicated enough without having another 8 different licenses to consider when you're publishing your work? I know the idea is that you forget that GPL, BSD and whatnot ever existed and rely exclusively on Creative Commons judgement about what should be in the license but it would have been nice to have been given a 'best fit' from the existing licenses in the wild. Also a quick run-down on the differences between the Creative Commons license and the best fit, and hints as to what they might mean in a courtroom or in corporate negotiations would be nice.

There's simply not enough information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the given licenses, and how they compare to the incumbents, to make them compelling. And if they're not compelling then they're just another 8 licenses to try and pin the tail on when you're starting up a project.

Re:Multiplication of instances beyond necessity

[kirkjobsluder]

Is it just me, or was the world complicated enough without having another 8 different licenses to consider when you're publishing your work? I know the idea is that you forget that GPL, BSD and whatnot ever existed and rely exclusively on Creative Commons judgement about what should be in the license but it would have been nice to have been given a 'best fit' from the existing licenses in the wild.

Perhaps it is just you. The big strength (and limitation) of the GPL and BSD license is that they exclusively define rights in terms of software: source code and object code. This works great for software but applies less well to other creative works. For example, the GPL does not handle the problem of a mixed media artist who wishes to use a photograph in a collage. Or the playright who wants to create a drama based around a painting. Or the musician who wants to sample the work of an Middle Eastern music ensemble.

Currently there are no standards for other creative works other beyond public domain and 'all rights reserved'. So actually, I disagree that the idea is to 'forget that GPL, BSD and whatnot ever really existed'. The GPL is great, if you are producing software. BSD is great, if you are producing software. If you are producing textbooks, educational multimedia, film, music, drama, poetry, or just about anything that is not software.

Re:Multiplication of instances beyond necessity

[kirkjobsluder]

For example, the lack of a public performance clause means in the GPL means that while one can copy a GPL audio recording, one does not have permission to play the recording in a nightclub or over the radio.

Public domain

[Ed Avis]

It's good to see that the Creative Commons people are encouraging authors to put works into the public domain, which is the simplest way to make something freely redistributable and the most liberal (as well as not having questions of how to interpret the wording in a particular licence).

Unfortunately, the Open Source Initiative refuse to certify public domain code as Open Source (they did in an earlier version of the Open Source definition, but not now, according to license-approval@opensource.org). So in a way this is another split between the Stallman / Lessig / FSF camp and the Eric Raymond / OSI camp, even though in theory they hold the same set of criteria for deciding what is free.

Re:-1 Offtopic

[jon787]

Abiword does it too

Don't use, if you want people to use your code

[Nevyn]

By answering three simple questions, the Creative Commons web application selects an appropriate license for you.

That's the problem, the OpenSource world is all about everyone else. It almost doesn't matter how good your code is, if you aren't using a license I've heard of and understand then I'm not going to bother looking at/using your code.

Here's the simple answer:

• Do you want anyone to do anything with the code ... choose MIT
• Do you want anyone to be able to use it, but any changes to the code to be freely available Choose LGPL
• Do you want everything that uses your code to be freely available Choose GPL

In theory you can substitute public domain for the first option, but in reality this is very murky ... and you're probably better off just BSD/LGPL dual licensing.

Remeber you're trying to get technical people to use your product, we are coders, not lawyers.

Re:Don't use, if you want people to use your code

[KjetilK]

The Creative Commons Licenses are not intended for code, they are intended for artistic works mostly. In the GNU world, it is not the GPL you might want to replace with a CC license, it is the FDL. I'll probably do just that with my How to use a compass-project.

That being said, I'd like to elaborate on the choice of software licenses, though. Rather than thinking about the code, think about what you want to achieve with your code:

• If you want to promote Free Software, choose GPL.
• If you want to promote a specific application or technology, choose BSD/MIT/that kind of stuff.
• If you just want to contribute to mankind and don't care about fame, fortune, who gets to cash in, politics or anything, release it to the public domain.

Re:Don't use, if you want people to use your code

[Hobophile]

The difficulty here lies in your assumption that people would use the Creative Commons licenses for software. They have a FAQ which answers this concern:

Right now we don't plan to get involved in software licensing at all. Instead, we'll concentrate on scholarship, film, literature, music, photography, and other kinds of creative works. To the extent that we'll deal with types of content that others are already building licenses for -- take the EFF's Open Audio License, for example -- we view that as a good thing. The more ways authors have to get their works out in the public sphere, the better.

Your recommendations may well apply to software, and in all honesty I would probably GPL any software I wrote which I thought had any usefulness at all to others. However, I feel differently about my writing -- I consider it more important and more personal, and though I am willing to post it online for others to read, I have a couple concerns.

Basically I don't want anyone to take credit for something I've written, and I don't want anyone to make a profit off of it if I am not also included in the profiting. I know that I gain these rights automatically whenever I create a work, but it is not entirely clear to the casual visitor/reader what happens to those rights once I've placed something online.

So the Creative Commons licenses provide a fast, headache-free way for me to share my works while also spelling out what my intentions are. For example, I selected the "Attribution, No Derivatives, Non-commercial Use" license for one of my plays.

Any reader curious about what rights have been granted can easily find out, and if a dispute arises, I can point them to a legally sound resource supporting my position.

This particular play was available online previously as a locked down PDF, which was not a solution I was particularly happy with, but which seemed workable at the time. I am much more comfortable with the present license, which incidentally forbides the very digital restrictions I felt the need to impose before.

This is no big loss, in my opinion. My goal is to share, not to police, and the licenses that Creative Commons offers help me achieve that goal in a satisfactory way.

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[AaronSw]

The GPL (and, I believe, the LGPL) requires you release the source code for any modified versions you distribute. ShareAlike does not.

Learning to troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Its funny you mention that. I consider my self a master troll, and I'm actually thinking of starting a small school. Please post your thoughts on the matter.

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the software license chooses

Bang, BANG -- BANG!!

unnh... a tunnel of light... and at the end, a Soviet Beowulf Cluster...

Really good idea!

[Ark42]

I really like the concept of the site. Picking a license is a very difficult part of releasing the source to a project, and the reason some of my personal projects are still closed source.

I would REALLY like to see something like this site, but slightly more involved, with a few more questions (with the description popup tips you can click on) where the end result is either a funky name like "Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License" or GPL or something like that if the answers you picked to the questions actually fit GPL. Having only the funky names for responses doesn't seem complete enough to me.

Koan

[b1t r0t]

One day, the disciple said unto the master: "Master, there are so many free software licenses with so many different requirements that nobody can possibly remember them all. I shall design my own set of unified free software licenses to replace all the others, and thereby set us all free!"

The master immediately slapped the disciple upside his head.

"Master, why did you strike me?"

"We have no need for yet another free software license!"

The disciple was suddenly enlightened.

Re:Koan

[leshert]

Amusing, but this would be a more proper koan:

One day, the disciple said unto the master: "Master, there are so many free software licenses with so many different requirements that nobody can possibly remember them all. I shall design my own set of unified free software licenses to replace all the others, and thereby set us all free!"

The master immediately slapped the disciple.

"Master, why did you strike me?"

The master said nothing, and the disciple went away.

The next day, the disciple returned to the master, but before he could say anything, the master immediately slapped the disciple.

"Master, why did you strike me again?"

"I did not strike you again. Yesterday, I struck you with my left hand. Today I strike you with my right hand. Tomorrow I shall kick you."

The disciple was suddenly enlightened.

Re:Koan

[Anonymous Coward]

And the master said
Read the FAQ and chant with me
CC licenses are NOT for software. Om me padme hum. Not for software. Om me padme hum. Not for software....

Re:Text? Binary? Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, knowing Microsoft, the binary blobs will probably be little-endian....

Can't wait to meet your kids

[Gothmolly]

You know, the ones you've raised to believe that there is no such thing as good or evil, ethical behavior or savagery, production or theft, the power of the dollar or the power of the gun.
The best thing is that I can say is that I hope you inherit the world you're advocating.
Give your kids what they need? So your need trumps everything else? This sounds like pure Marxism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
Frankly, you shouldn't have bred.

in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush 1 others 4

Re:-1 Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think XML is some magic pixie dust you can sprinkle on a format and make it all better, whereas binary formats are automatically complicated? XML is just another way of stating, it doesn't necessarily make formats any easier to reverse-engineer.

Re:-1 Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but someone, somewhere may actually use MS Office.

Wow!

Useless. Go slit your throat instead of wasting my air.

Gag me

[Anonymous Coward]

"On first glance -- brown hair, pale skin, and undergrad-style clothes -- Rich Baraniuk looks like an average guy. But look at his eyes, and you know you're in the presence of something rare. They're giant and brown and fairly glowing with the light of the millions of synapses firing at the same instant. "

Go Rich go, let those synapses fire away w/those big eyeballs while we all gag.

Ibiblio.org-Creative Commons sites

[chimprawk]

Ibiblio.org has put together a index of sites that use the Creative Commons licenses.

You can check it out by going to the home page http://www.ibiblio.org

You might find it interesting to see the licenses in action.

Potential Recursion Problem

[frostman]

as soon as i saw the story, i went to the site and started on the merry path to licensing out some content (maybe some pictures or something)...

but the license i was most interested in, Attribution + Share Alike, seemed to present a recursion problem.

with software licenses this isn't such a big deal, because a big fat license and attribution file can be included (license.txt) and often is.

but with something like a picture, the attribution and/or copyright notice is not realistically going to be longer than a "normal" URL.

i send them a note about this, which i quote below. hopefully somebody has greater insight into this than i do, because to me it looks like you could end up doing a whole lotta work building your license.html pages on your website (mary in the example below) or you're more or less begging to be plagiarized.

the example:

i take a picture, you (joe) modify it, someone else (mary) modifies that, and it gets printed in a magazine. what's the credit? "foto by frost/joe/mary" or "foto by mary/joe/frost" or....?

this gets really complicated if, say, i provide a bland little picture and joe crops and enlarges it to make it interesting and then mary uses it in a collage that's really beautiful... wherein mary is really the primary author of her piece, and i am the author of the source of a component thereof. and what if mary has used fifty such pieces? soon there is more attribution than she can reasonably expect to print next to pictures of the collage (which she has, after all, been required to license)... do we then have an attribution link?

and in such a case, if all the original elements were licensed through creativecommons, would there be a way, on that website, to show all the attributions within one URL (with licenses)?

if i license something with "Attribution + Share Alike" that itself uses things licensed with "Attribution + Share Alike," i probably need to include those licenses' links and attributions within the creativecommons link to my page... at a very minimum.

Re:Potential Recursion Problem

[aderuwe]

The original author must be attributed, is what licenses usually say. Please do correct me if I'm wrong...

Re:Potential Recursion Problem

[frostman]

that's what i'm assuming also but in the example i gave there are (at least) three original authors.

obviously it's in the spirit of the license to have all authors duly credited even if there are a lot of them. on the other hand that's a daunting task when you get into things like collage, or a whole website, or...

i imagine a technological solution to this, maybe complexcopyright.org or something.

further musing: is ALT sufficient attribution for an image on the web? if i make a whole site with graphics of "Attribution+Share Alike" license, can i just have one "image credits" link at the bottom of each page?

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[Anonymous Coward]

i allways figured that the GPL stated that any change to GPL licenced codehad to be released under GPL unless it for internal use only (as in not released to the open market). you can still charge money for your modefied code but you cant claim to be the creator of the original code, only the changes...

It's not all about code

[LetterJ]

A lot of posters seem to be oblivious to the fact that people want to share things other than code. Things like art, literature and music. The GPL, BSD and other software licenses are a shoehorn fit at best and blatantly inappropriate in most cases when applied to these domains of intellectual property. Go read the GPL and see how many of the paragraphs deal exclusively with software terminology. Those licenses deal in terms of "source code", "machine code", etc. That's pretty easy to interpret for software, but what's "source code" in art? In music? Is sheet music the real source or should you be providing a fully instrumented MIDI file to work with as "source"? These new types of licenses are more appropriate for things that aren't software. This isn't a replacement for your precious GPL. It's, instead, an appropriate parallel for non-software instances.

Re:It's not all about code

[kirkjobsluder]

I think that most of the people have not read the licenses. Here what the attribution license gives you:

3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:

a: to reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more Collective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporated in the Collective Works;
b: to create and reproduce Derivative Works;
c: to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly, perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital audio transmission the Work including as incorporated in Collective Works;
d: to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly, perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital audio transmission Derivative Works;

The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats. All rights not expressly granted by Licensor are hereby reserved.

Basically, the GPL and BSD license only deal with a and b within a specific media. These licenses do not cover phonorecords, public performance, public display or digital audio transmission.

Please mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent down. His comment doesn't deserve a +5. At best, it should be a +3.

I have read the site, I have read the licenses, and they seem to me quite lawyerproof. They have been written by lawyers, after all. :)

Like many others, it seems this parent has just read the summary of the licenses, and not bothered to grok the legalese "source" code.

No good can come of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how adding 12 new open source licenses to the pool makes things less complicated. It's surely just going to add to the confusion.

The dangerous part is that there is far more to those licenses than the brief questions, or the synopses would suggest. Anyone wanting to use them must make sure they read the full text and understand all of its implications.

Wouldn't you rather use a mature, tested and widely-known and understood license instead?

Please mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another guy who hasn't bothered to read and understand what CC is about.

I am having difficulty imagining many situations where people would use it,

Anytime you have made some work, don't have a contract with a big professional distributor (which, believe it or not, is the majority of the cases) and don't have the skills to write a license yourself.

You know what the Net is supposed to be about, right? It is supposed to help exchange of information, ideas, works, etc. The CC licenses are here to help that.

Major corporations will continue to write their own licenses, of course.

It is not going to replace copyright for music or books

Obviously, you don't understand what copyright is.

If it takes off at all, it would be for the benefit of amateurs only, but then, what's the point?

And you got a +5 with such bullshit?

Please mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

But i think the trouble is that this selection system will ultimately invite people not to think of the differences between the licences.

Oh yeah? How so? There's a page that summarizes very clearly the differences between the licenses. Besides, even the legalese is easy to read!

Here's yet another parent that doesn't belong to the +5 level.

How long until a cease and desist

[Anonymous Coward]

from Creative Labs??

Then again, CL has not really been creative lately...

You Woefully Miss the Point

[FreeUser]

Re:Who will use this?

I will, for one, and many others already have.

Although this seems like a fine idea in theory, I am having difficulty imagining many situations where people would use it, which would be useful to others.

There is already a bunch of material licensed under their licenses, and numerous other efforts to achieve similar results under which a great deal of good music and prose is licensed. Clearly there are many others who are having little difficulty in finding these sorts of free licenses useful.

It is not going to replace copyright for music or books (I realise these aren't mentioned, I'm just trying to think of some possible use - theirs are pretty crap and unlikely) for example - the industry wouldn't touch it for obvious reasons.

It isn't "replacing copyright" (though drastic copyright reform eliminating the government monopoly entitlements it grants with a more balanced "sales tax as creator royalty" scheme would be highly desirable), it is creating a license that, similar to the BSD License, the FDL, and the GPL, will facilitate a growing commons of material all creative people can use and build upon.

Finally, who gives a fuck about the "industry" as such. Their purposes are already served, and have been so by a century of corrupt copyright legislation bought and paid for from our inexpensively purchased "representatives" in congress. The cultural squatters of New York, Nashville, and Hollywood, and the cartels they have formed, are the reason that the "vast cultural wasteland" of television and the lack of cultural depth in modern society have become so obvious, and such obvious truisms that they have become cliches.

These free licenses aren't intended to benefit the entrenched "industry" any more than the GPL is designed to Benefit the Sun Microsystems and Microsoft's of the world. It is intended to benefit ARTISTS and CREATIVE PEOPLE, not cultural squatters and an industry that has denigrated the art into a mere product of mass production, filtered down to the lowest common denominator.

If it takes off at all, it would be for the benefit of amateurs only, but then, what's the point?

First this is nonsense. One could have made the same inane (and in retrospect obviously incorrect) argument against the GPL, which has benefitted both amateurs (such as Linus Torvalds when he first began writing the Linux kernel) and professionals (such as IBM).

Likewise, the Creative Commons will empower amateurs (such as myself) and professionals. No, it won't empower Time Warner any more than the GPL empowers Microsoft, but it will empower Indy music and film makers (who are often professionals and not amateurs, though they often serve as a bridge in getting new and talented filmmakers noticed).

Second, every professional was at one time in their career an amateur. A great deal of amateur material is crap, but a great deal is also excellent. Having that material available as part of a commons, free to be distributed, improved upon, and incorporated into other, grander works is a very valuable thing to artists, to society, and to the health of our cultural heritage itself. No, it doesn't benefit Disney and Time-Warner, it benefits the tens of thousands of talented artists Disney, Time-Warner, and others of their ilk have traditionally trampled under their feet, and in addition it benefits the rest of us who enjoy and admire such works.

And that is very, very good thing, tripe and propoganda from the "industry" at its shills and astroturfers notwithstanding.

Please mod parent down.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have rarely seen so many +5 comments that didn't deserve their rating.

Where did you read that this site gives licenses for the U.S.? The only text that is specifically dependant on the U.S. law is the Public Domain Dedication. No other text mentions the United States of America.

Of course, some might wonder what about other legal systems? Well, there's a FAQ!

Yes, it would be nice to have the licenses, more than translated, adapted to other countries and their legal systems. At least for France, it shouldn't be too hard; the GPL has been analyzed by French jurists, and they consider it is directly usable (once translated) in French courts. The CC licenses don't seem to outlandish to the GPL (yes, I have read them) so I think translating should be enough for France at least.

Well good for you

[Anonymous Coward]

You feed your kids. What do I care what you do? I don't see anyone telling you that you have to use one of these licences.

I don't have kids and I can manage to both feed myself and my wife, cloth myself, keep a roof over my head and go on holiday twice a year. Thats with my day job. Then I come home and work on a large Open Source project, too. Are you saying that you're such a looser that you cant work and contribute to a charitable cause or Open Source project?

You suck. Looser.

Re:Well good for you

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loser
ht tp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=looser

Who's the 'looser' here, again?

This is probably totally off topic

[da_Den_man]

But...I was reading the 'Free For All' book online and came across this issue of what AT&T wanted to do about the licensing of BSD....I think I see a pattern here....:

To make matters worse, AT&T often wanted the BSD team to include features that would force all the BSD users to buy a newer, more expensive license from AT&T. In addition, license verification was never a quick or easy task. McKusick says, "We had a person whose fulltime job was to keep the AT&T licensing person happy." In the end, he concludes, "They paid us next to nothing and got a huge windfall."

Hmmmmmm

Nice idea but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read in alt.hackers.licenses that buried deep within the license code is a clause that activates on the 3rd Tuseday of every odd-numbered month that gives Creative Commons unlimited commercial rights to the work .. can anyone confirm this?

Can a license be licensed under itself?

[Anonymous Coward]

The text of this license is protected under the recursive public license.

something simple for a change

[daniel.haran]

It's refreshing to see people trying to make things simple for a change. The legal differences between different OS licenses are overwhelming at first.

Sure, as someone pointed out above, this may mean I may not have to investigate and think about the differences between existing licenses. Well, IMO, that would be a 'good thing'. I have other things to think about.

And imagine all those for who english is not their mother tongue. With this license, I would only have a few words to teach my francophone colleagues. Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure a lot of anglophones can't understand legalese either...

This would actually be my main critique of OS: so much of it is needlessly complicated.

Too many long licenses, short and/or inaccurate or no docs/installation notes, ideological camps all over the spectrum and so little plain speak.

Looking for blog software recently, I was unable to find something that I thought worked well that I could maintain (I guess I'll have to learn to use Perl). Sorting through all the different projects, I wished people would say "we started this slash port because we wanted something in our fave language"/"we think slash is a great idea, but has a poor architecture and would be easier to maintain written in an OO language".

For the most part, and on most OS projects, No such luck. Although this idea introduces even more licenses, it's still a step in the right direction: simplicity. Now, if we could make it that easy to find/compare OS software...

Re:something simple for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Exaplin how 8 new, untested, extremely complex liscences == "simple".

Oh, the selection of which liscence has been prechewd for you and simplified down to three choices easy questions... Course you better fully read and understand the liscences before you use them, suddenly it's not so simple any more.

I mean you wouldn't use a liscence without actually reading and understanding it would you? That would be nuts...

By answering three simple questions...

[Hubert_Shrump]

1) Are you virulently Open Source?
2) Do you want any large coporation to get their asses sued for using your code?
3) Are you hot?

this is useful

[will]

a lot of picky criticisms here, most of which seem to miss the point in bizarrely obvious ways. it's not a new set of software licenses, it's not a position in the OSI/catfight, it's not even pretending to be a panacea or simplify anything that's happening already.

the varous open source software licenses have to deal with all the complexity of a medium where each product is compound, divisible, modifiable and copiable. that's why they're either very very short or very very long. For anything more restrictive than the MIT license's 'whatever, dude, but i made it', it gets complicated.

what cc are trying to do, like many others, is take the principles of the open source movement, and some of the lessons learned there, and apply them to the broader field of creative production. Unlike many others, they're trying to make it easy to use, without concealing the complexity of the subject, and I think they've pulled out exactly the right three questions to do that.

I get this kind of question all the time: i'm one part programmer and one part artist, most of my friends are wholly one or the other, and it's hard work trying to make sense of open source to writers, activists, people who just make things. The open part they tend to like, but the source part makes no sense at all. compile what?

Still, they eventually get this vague idea that someone else could take what they're doing, do something interesting with it and bring it back, and the light bulb goes off: their creative monologue will turn into a conversation, they'll gain ideas and confidence and get better at what they do. But how? And where to start? Go to GNU? I don't think so. Even opencontent.org gets all hair-shirt legal at you.

CC is friendly, supportive and prepared to put the money into lawyering things for the benefit of others. It would benefit from more historical and ideological context, a bit of cheering up and more clear recommendations to go with the questions, but I for one am grateful for a bit of potentially important work well done, even if I never use it because the GPL works fine for what I make.

Let's hear the proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiting...

I use a Creative Commons license

[MarkWatson]

I was contacted about a month ago by Creative Commons.

I started using their license ideas on my web site a few weeks ago.

Pardon a small plug, but you can get my free web books (under a CC license) here.

-Mark

Re:I use a Creative Commons license

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks. If you are willing to give it away free, it must surely be crap. Keep going though, after you've given away your 100 practice books, you'll be talented enought to write something that is worth looking at (and paying for).

Re:I use a Creative Commons license

[MarkWatson]

I suggest that you do two things:

1. stop posting as an AC - it is better to know who one is speaking with!

2. I get very positive feedback from my free web books - try a google newsgroup search for comments on my web books. Better yet, try reading one.

Apache is given away for free; is it crap? I have my own motivations for spending about 10 hours per week working on my free web books - and most of that motivation is unselfish :-)

-Mark

I want the inverse

[Clith]

I want a site where I can paste in the text of a license and find out how it answers the three questions.

Ya, that's the ticket!

There's no BSD-style option

[Brett Glass]

Interestingly, none of the possible combinations of choices on the Creative Commons page leads to an MIT, Apache, or BSD-style license, in which one allows use of the code for any purpose but disclaims liability. If you do not demand attribution, allow unrestricted commercial use, and allow derivative works to be created, the site attempts to steer you to the public domain. Are the authors doing this in an attempt to dissuade users from choosing this sort of license?

Re:sharealike = gpl?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the GPL doesn't allow you to distribute your derivative works under any license other than the GPL. Even if you have a less restrictive license on some (your own) parts of the code, the entire derivative work can only be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

If your own parts of the code are useless separate from the derivative work, then you basically can't distribute them under any license besides the GPL. If they are useful on their own, you can consider your code a separate, original work, which combined with the GPLd work produces the derivative work.

If you create an original work, you are free to release it under any number of different, incompatible licenses. Unless of course the licenses are so overly broad that they state anything about other software that you can use, but I would tend to think such provisions to be unenforceable.

To put it more simply, lets say there is a GPL'd work A and your part of the work B is under a simplified BSD-style license (advertising and promotion clauses removed). What you get is:

A[GPL] + B[BSD] -> Derivative[GPL]

The existence of Derivative[GPL] doesn't hinder the separate existence of the works A[GPL] and B[BSD] under their respective licenses, unless B is tightly enough intergrated with A that they are unseperable.

IANAL, so this is just how I understand it, but I believe RMS would agree that this at least the correct interpretation of the GPL.

Last Post!

[alpg]

"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach

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