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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.
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.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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.
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.
Is it fascism yet?
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...
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Makes the Sun Community Source License seem simple.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
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.
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.
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.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
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:
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.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
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.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
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?
~Idarubicin
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.