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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"
Because, after all they don't want to impinge on /.'s territory.
reading through GNU and GNU FDL "license text" gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
-- jimmycarter
Would the results of that page be called a
Legalize-O-Matic ?
Sledge-O-Matic, not just for spraying audiences anymore!!
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.
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.
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.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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?
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?
I'm not very good at making decisions... Or am I?
They're similar in spirit, but the GPL is more specifically tailored to computer code.
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.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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).
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.
Ñ'
on the "Free for All" website. Come on. Not only was the parent an idiot, at least one moderator has propegated this bullshit.
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)
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.
Makes the Sun Community Source License seem simple.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Because of this, I don't see why they thought it necessary to create a new, almost identical license.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Whoever just updated the site, please confirm this - I fear for my Karma.
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.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Look, the Google cache proves it.
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,"
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
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
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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
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.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
This Like That - fun with words!
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.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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."
HmmmmmmYou keep going until you die..."Me".
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?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
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.
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