Creative Commons Launches CC+ License 67
A user writes "Creative Commons has this week released their CC+ protocol, which provides a way for authors to allow other people to commercially reuse their work, and give them a pre-negotiated fee or percentage. It makes it easy for people to release the Material under CC-No-Commercial, and then have a way to charge for commercial use if companies are interested."
In other news (Score:3, Funny)
Did read that right... (Score:2)
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So... (Score:4, Funny)
That's smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
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As a first guess, I think it might be that to fairly take advantage of community leverage, would result in a very complicated setup.
Anyone have any ideas on how to put a simple system together to handle such a thing?
all the best,
drew
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1)Come up with the terms of your non-conforming (to the GPL) distribution of product.
2)name your license (I shall choose "QHNDASPL")
3)QHNDASPL states "you may use either GPL, terms from 1, or QHNDASPL to redistribute"
4)Only accept submissions with the QHNDASPL license
This will leverage the many eyes, theoretically, and allow you to use any patches submitted.
You would not be able to use pure GPL code and leverage what already exists (as GPL), but you could use BSD code and accept patches (if that is wha
Re:That's smart... (Score:4, Informative)
Any license that does not grant free redistribution (not free as in beer, free as in freedom---as in that the re-distributor is free to charge money for the service, if someone would pay) is definitely not free, and most likely not open source.
I don't know why people get these wrong impressions that "free software" == "anti-commercial", but nothing could be further from the truth. Free software is just about as Laissez-Faire, free, capitalistic economic system as you can possibly get (free from government-granted monopolies, etc.). Licenses that "play nice" with communities by "graciously" granting non-commercial uses is definitely better than completely proprietary licenses (or a lack of one), but it's only halfway there since any such license still restricts your freedom in ways that are not acceptable.
If you aren't totally convinced still why these "non-commercial only" licenses are wrong, here's a very simple reason why: Those licenses are GPL-incompatible, since GPL does not allow addition of restrictions with small exceptions, and any project or software using those restrictive licenses is excluding a lot of code out there that is already released under GPL.
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Qt is dual licensed. It's not a modified version of the GPL. It is free software, because it's GPL. In fact, it's, in a way, freer than GPL software, because yo
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And I would have to take exception to your claim that dual-licensed projects are somehow freer than GPL, unless it's dual-licensed to accommodate two free software licenses that h
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The GPL is precisely why you can use it in a commercial product and make money. The GPL places no restrictions on making money. I could legally sell you that GNU/Linux distribution CD I downloaded off a torrent for a million dollars, if you would only agree to pay that much.
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Or see the stdc++ library in the GNU GCC toolchain. It is listed under GPL but with the exemption that any software linked to it doesn't imply that it must be GPL as well.
The addition to the CC license is not even worthy of a mention as any copyright holder could do what this license
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Re:That's smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're entirely missing the point here. Sure we've always been free to dual-license things, but many people just aren't good at writing copyright notices and the like. This essentially provides content providers and potential licensers with a consistent user interface within which to operate.
Imagine that a publisher sees a really insightful code example in a blog entry on Erlang, which he thinks would make an excellent addition to an upcoming book. But the blog's author hasn't made clear whether this work can somehow be licensed for commercial use; or even if he has, the publisher might be having a hard time parsing the author's legalese. The publisher very well might just give up on it rather than go through the effort of contacting and negotiating with the author, and in the end both the publisher and the author lose out. On the other hand, if the author can just put a Creative Commons CC+ button on the page, the publisher can see it immediately and think: "I've seen this before and I know what it means. This work can be licensed, I can click here to find out what it will cost, etc."
This protocol continues Creative Commons' legacy of making public licensing accessible to the common man. And I think it's an excellent idea.
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That's not what this is. It could sort of become that, but it is not.
First, CC licenses are not recommended for code. I think the still recommend the GPL for that.
Second, I think this is only for their licenses with NC term
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No it's not. Not even close.
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SWEET! (Score:1)
Couldn't you (Score:3, Insightful)
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That license addresses exactly what you said :-/ (highlighted in bold). It's useful to be combined with CC-NC, and does nothing more than lay out the terms of what you have to do to obtain a commercial license.
BTW, waiting for all the Stallmanians to start flaming about how the license (together with CC-NC) is not "free" and thus 3v1l!!!1111.
Copyleft PLUS non-free license = still Free (Score:1)
BTW, waiting for all the Stallmanians to start flaming about how the license (together with CC-NC) is not "free" and thus 3v1l!!!1111.
From the article:
With CC+, the license can also provide a link to secure rights beyond noncommercial rights -- most obviously commercial rights, but also services of use even when commercial use is permitted, such as warranty, ability to use without attribution, or even access to performance or physical media.
I could foresee combining a copyleft (such as CC-BY-SA-* or GNU GPL) with some other license in this way.
CC+ is dual licensing (Score:3, Informative)
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Anyone who was able to read the article able to say if there was anything in there about how they will handle limitations of the offering? If someone wants to raise or lower or otherwise alter the terms under which they will allow commercial use, are there provisions to supersede prior statements, or to limit how long the commercial offering remains legally binding?
Typically, you'd want a price quote to be a legally binding offering
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Complaints from Capitalists in... (Score:2)
Sure, I've heard about this (Score:5, Funny)
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Good. (Score:2)
Cookbook like examples please? (Score:2, Interesting)
Say, the item I use is 1/12th the amount of major imagery in a product.
Where's the breakover for fees if:
1)A not intended for profit item that somehow accidentally earns a few hundred bucks
2)Part of a presentation in a business that I would normally pay between $5 and $200 (at iStockPhoto for example) but otherwise never sees the light of day
3)Part of a menu at a restaurant
4)Part of a large
Re:Cookbook like examples please? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm making a documentary that I may as well plug now, www.followingalexiswest.com. (In fact, I'm making this post from LAX, having just returned from on-location filming.)
Now, in any documentary, you typically get about 20-25:1 shooting ratio. What that means is that for every hour of actual documentary, you've filmed about 20-25 hours of raw footage. In my case, much of that is interviews - educational, important interviews.
That would normally end up on the cutting-room floor - but there's so much educational, important information there. Once I get the stuff digitized, I'm taking a copy of all the raw footage and giving it to the New Zealand Film Archive, and uploading it online on Google Video. And I want people to use this raw footage in their own documentary projects - especially if they're students.
But there are still "commercial" uses - indie documentarians like me - who could also use the footage. I don't want them to take it without negotiating a fair price, but I do want to let them know that it's within the realm of possibility to licence the footage without breaking the bank.
Now, I could release it under a CC licence and sell it to commercial interests, but a CC+ licence makes it explicit that I'm looking to make money - but if you just want to muck around with it for a student project, you'll get no hassle.
Speaking of (Score:1)
I'm a small time programmer and I've been trying to find a license that allows me to release the source code for anyone to modify/use but not have the ability to take my source code and repackage it in another form and make money off it. I don't have a problem with people using the code itself to make money, my only issue is with repackaging it to sell.
I started looking at the CC license and I was pleased with it until I seen you can't offer exclusive license deals. Now I'm an idiot when it
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First, there is no such thing as 'the CC license,' there is the Creative Commons organisation and the offer a family of widely different licenses. The restrictions you want mean that your code will not qualify under the Free Software Foundation's four freedoms or the OSI definition so you can immediately discount any Free Software or Open Source license. The closest license I know of is the CC non-commercial share-alike license, but I don't know if it makes a distinction between using the software commerc
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I think you were pretty hard on the grandparent. He sounds honestly confused, and wants to make his work available, but is worried someone will just grab it, change the name, sell it to a market, and screw him.
It seems like a perfectly valid worry, to me at least. And depending on why he cares, there are some options.
But, it is not a precise enough concern to deal with yet.
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What I do is code plugins for a third party application. This application has a very small market so developers don't have many resources to turn to (When I started the SDK only came with 3 plugin examples).
The reason behind releasing some source code is that I've gone through all the pains of figuring out how the application works, I've learned all the ins and outs. By releasing some source code I would like to help others that are just getting started. A sort of reference when you first get s
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Your problem comes when someone doesn't follow the rules, and I think you may be a bit too worried because you apear to be in a niche market.
Your motives are to 'spread your knowledge' (it's darn good advertising as well), but to stop someone from rep
Ironic bug (Score:2)
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I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. You should consult a lawyer!
As far as selling the code, there are two primary concerns. One is legal and a question of rights. The other is a practical matter. Pretty much any method of releasing your source to someone to study will necessitate giving copies of the code away for free. So there is a practical concern that people would aquire your code in that manner and thus the market would be eliminated. Even if you are not concerned about this possibili
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That sentence is kind of fuzzy. Are you concerned about the repackaging because you want to sell the binary? Get the credit? Know how many people are using your software?
The above questions assume that your problem is with someone literally compiling your code under a different name (after changing the GUI, etc. to match.) Do you care if someone adds a feature? Incorporates it into a c
In Soviet Russia (Score:1, Funny)
Obligatory (Score:2)
How do you define commercial? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, everyone should pick the license they want, but I think people underestimate just how limiting the NC licenses are for people that try to stick to the law.
"Commercial Use" ill-defined? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is a Red Cross advertisement commercial or noncommercial? If the Red Cross paid a magazine for an ad containing a CC+ licensed image, then the magazine is earning some money from it, even though the Red Cross itself is non-commercial. (Or is it?)
It is even hard to come up with examples where the use is disconnected from the slightest taint of a direct or indirect commercial connection.
Of course, CC+ is also incompatible with GPL-licensed software. For example, a CC licensed "non-commercial use" icon in a software package would prevent a commercial entity from using it, defeating the purpose of the GPL.
Even charitable use is commercial (Score:2)
So in your Red Cross example, it wouldn't be necessary to run the ad in a profit-making publication to count as commercial use.
Not as useful as I thought (Score:1)
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Written Content (Score:2)