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Quote: You Want To Share Except When You Don't

Submitted by Jeremy
on March 29, 2008 - 11:01am

"If you truly wish to relinquish ALL rights then public domain is exactly that. This is obviously the most free. If additionally you wish to retain attribution only then /usr/src/share/misc/license.template is a great choice. This is probably the most free except for public domain. If it bothers you if Microsoft uses your performance in a Vista ad then you must pick something else. But now you are in a sticky place where you want to share except when you don't. The available licenses are tricky legalese, and finding one to match your motives is difficult and the license may have consequences you don't anticipate."

Parsimony of licences

Lawrence D'Oliveiro (not verified)
on
March 30, 2008 - 3:36am

My hunch would be to look at one of the Creative Commons licences for non-software, and of course GPL for software. By choosing a licence that's also popular with other creators, you make it easier for people to mix your work with others.

Is there an equivalent term to "Occam's Razor" for licences? "Do not multiply licences unnecessarily". Perens' Razor? :)

Creative Commons licenses

Anonymous Coward (not verified)
on
March 30, 2008 - 4:25am

Creative Commons licenses have little or none legal value in certain countries.

Got a reference?

Mr_Z
on
March 30, 2008 - 10:48am

Got a reference on that? The recent NIN album was released under a CC license. I can't imagine them not looking into such things.

--
Program Intellivision and play Space Patrol!

Creative Commons Licencing

Andrew Russell (not verified)
on
March 30, 2008 - 4:24pm

I was surprised when I was told that New Zealand didn't have CC licences, but yes the parent poster was correct.
The licence has to be localised to local legal language, unlike the GPL which is pretty universal (I think, IANAL).
Recently NZ did localise the CC licences, and anounced it here: NZ Creative Commons

Andrew

If you look at the parent

Anonymous (not verified)
on
March 30, 2008 - 10:46pm

If you look at the parent URL of the link you gave, http://creativecommons.org/international, it says:

Our generic licenses are jurisdiction-agnostic: they do not mention any particular jurisdiction's laws or statutes or contain any sort of choice-of-law provision. The licenses are, however, based on the U.S. Copyright Act in many respects. This means that, though we have no reason to believe that the licenses would not function in legal systems across the world, it is at least conceivable that some aspects of our licenses will not align perfectly to a particular jurisdiction's laws.

That's why they "port" licenses to specific jurisdictions: not because the generic one's don't work, just so they can be 100% certain the licenses work precisely as intended. This is very different to the claim earlier in this thread that "Creative Commons licenses have little or none legal value in certain countries."

Thank you both

Mr_Z
on
March 31, 2008 - 5:13am

Both your comment and the one you replied to together explain things much better for me. Thanks!

--
Program Intellivision and play Space Patrol!

NIN!

Anonymous (not verified)
on
March 30, 2008 - 1:38pm

Ghosts I-IV, mmmmm :)