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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"
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?
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 ?
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)
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?
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.
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"?
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.")