On 17/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It does us no good to promote brands which are themselves promoting confusion that harms our long term mission.
Creative Commons continues to discriminate against some human endeavors by making NC-family licenses their primary recommendation and by promoting loaded language like "free to use or share, *even commercially*". It also continues to conflate vastly different licensing schemes under the same name, creating confusion which we suffer from daily, and it promotes a careless oversimplification of licensing which results in many claims of free licensing not being worth the electrons they are printed on. And brand promotion and adoption seem to rule over considered philosophical positions. So long as CC continues to do things like this, I'll continue to believe that brand association is not in our best interest.
I don't see that we really have a choice, frankly.
If not CC, then who?
Any copyleft-related movements benefit enormously from *few* dominant licenses, right? It reduces confusion, promotes large body of intermixable works, and that body of work under the same license is what can draw people into it who are otherwise not idealogically fussed about it.
CC is clearly working its butt off to promote themselves as the prominent org and set of licenses to consider when it comes to alternatives to traditional copyright. They do it well -- and as they should. The FSF has shown no interest in promoting non-software licenses - and probably quite rightly too, given their name and mission, it's not quite in their bounds.
Geni seems to suggest in this thread that Wikimedia should be promoting some things like licenses. I'd like to be convinced that that's within our mission.
So if not CC, then who?
Like you I am also deeply disappointed that CC 1) makes no attempt to encourage people to choose truly free licenses (CC-BY,CC-BY-SA) 2) makes no arguments about freedom for users,society rather than freedom for authors 3) does not promote careful distinction between its licenses.
But I don't see how the fact that they are self-promoting is inherently problematic.
If CC is going to be out there winning this race -- and they are, 'cause no one else is competing -- then maybe we should be one step behind them calling out the useful reminders that CC doesn't emphasise.
This doesn't mean that we avoid things that have clear value, ... The key is David's last words "if it's useful". I'm not seeing it here.
Well, fine! That's all the point of my bringing this up was.
(BTW Greg, nice to see you posting again)
cheers, Brianna