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Creative Commons for Software?
rumint asks: "I am working on a software utility that I want to distribute freely. Unfortunately, there is a wide variety of nearly unintelligible software licenses (unless you are a lawyer). Of course there is the GPL, but I'm not sure it fits everyone's needs. Is there a Creative Commons equivalent for software licenses? If not, does some newly minted law school graduate want to put one together and contribute to humanity?"
Oh, come on now. Here's all you need to ask yourself:
* Do you want to let people distribute your software any way they want, including with less flexible terms than you distribute it? Pick the BSD license.
* Do you want to let people distribute your software any way they want, as * long as they grant others at least the same rights you granted them? Pick the GPL.
That's it. Those are your two choices. These are well understood and are easy to read (the BSD is easy to read because it's short, and the GPL is easy to read because it was written to be easy to read, as well as legally sound). Everything else is just a waste of people's time.
You can also trademark the name of your program and add a note that says something like "you can use the GPL as long as you don't name your program FooBarProg2000(tm). Otherwise you can't redistribute at all." Adding simple exceptions to an existing license is a good way to customize them without having to write new ones from scratch.
What you DO NOT want to do is write YET ANOTHER half-assed free software license. The world is full of them, thanks. Every damn company (or rather, their lawyers) thinks they have to invent their own silly license. Stop that! Besides, a license is not something you just "throw together". It needs to be very carefully written to protect everybody's rights yet not violate the fundamental software freedoms we all know and love (like being able to *use* the software for any purpose).
What I'm saying is, if really need a license other than these two, you better have a DAMN GOOD REASON. And don't worry if the license "meet's people's needs". It's your software, not theirs. Pick the license that gives you the warmest most fuzzy happy feeling in your tummy (heh).
And ignore the pro/anti GPL zealots. To a vast majority of your users, the various free software licenses like BSD and GPL are indistinguishable, and indeed can be completely ignored unless they are *redistributing* the software.
There is no reason you cannot use an ordinary Creative Commons license for software. For instance, I was just using Python-IRC
But most people prefer either the BSD or GPL for software since they are both hugely popular and compatible in one direction (BSD code can be freely re-licensed under the GPL, and intermixed with already GPLed code). Although I suppose the same might be true of BSD --> CC, there is already a HUGE amount of GPL software out there that you may as well be compatible with if at all possible.
The unofficial
While you can add a note along with your code saying that FooBarProg2000 is your trademark, your exception is a bad idea. Imagine you distribute your software with the following note: "you can distribute this software under the GPL provided you meet criteria FOO, otherwise you have no distribution rights". Person A meets criteria FOO, and distributes your software under the GPL to person B. Person B is now free not to meet criteia FOO, as they recieved the software under the GPL. Adding exceptions like this needs to be done carefully.
Also note that if you do manage to phrase your exception well, people can't mix it with other GPL code, so it's not all that useful.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
So what????
We are not talking here about everyone, but about YOU and YOUR software. It is TO YOU the one the license YOU choose should fit!
I think you focused the problem the wrong way.
You should think FIRST how do you want your software to be used and distributed, only THEN you should think about which license you should distribute your software with in order to achieve YOUR goals.
There is nothing as a "license mess". A license is only a written agreement between you and the one you share your software with, think about that. And then, you are lucky enough that you are not the first person in the world that wants to share his software with other people so you can take other's example. There are some license "templates" so widely used that they are even known by a generic name, like "the BSD" or "the GPL", that's all.
If one of those alreadly publicly known agreements fits you and your interests, pick it; if not, you will do as with any other 'a priori' agreement you would get into with other people: you would write it down, you would have it reviwed by an attorney and you'd stick with it.
And now, since you didn't tell us how do you want your software to be distributed, well, it's clear we can't help you about telling if there already is a commonly known "license template" you could use.