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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?"
The reason there is no Creative Commons license for software is that there would need to be two, basically equivalent to the BSD license and the GPL. Because software can be distributed in both easily-modifiable and not-easily-modifiable forms, any software license must take special notice of this.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The one license option that CC has that I don't see much of on the software side is "no commercial use."
Personally I detest such licenses because almost anything can be commercial. If I make a shareware disk and charge a copying fee, well that's probably commercial even if I'm only covering costs according to my own bookkeeping. What if I just use the program in my business but I don't sell the program. If you want to share, share... if someone figures out how to make some money selling or using the program even though you couldn't, what harm is done? The GPL does a much better job since basically anyone can use GPLed software for whatever reason, the sticking point comes if you were to try to proprietize it by distributing an extended version w/out source. So no one can really "steal" your work.
But I find that many creators like the idea of "no commercial use" intuitively. They are fine with sharing their work, but they worry someone might try to make a profit off of it. and so they want to rule that out. If you have a "commercial" purpose, then you need to negotiate a license.
ISTR the MAME/MESS emulator has a ncu clause in its license.
-- John.
It was all the rage in the late '80s / early '90s.
Consider just making it public domain.
Most people who will bother looking at it will end up treating it that way, & who wants to waste time or hire lawyers to waste time looking for violations.
A license is just a lot of legal jargon that most people won't bother reading & that, if ever tested, will end up meaning something different that what you thought you meant when you wrote/chose it.
You'll get everything you'd get from a "creative commons" without the hassle.
The GPL or LGPL or even the BSD license perhaps become worthwhile when a project reaches some critical size, but they don't make sense for the vast majority of software written by one person & given away gratis.