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Author Topic: Creative Commons license  (Read 10471 times)
Infidel
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« on: June 01, 2008, 10:58:42 »

Hi,

When I came across this project I was surprised at how it is distributed under a relatively obscure license, instead of something more usual and simpler like MIT or BSD. I find the license text quite confusing because it does not mention software, and detail irrelevant concepts like "public performance", music, etc.

So I went looking for more information about whether it is suitable for a commercial application, and I found this on the Creative Commons official FAQ:


Q: "Can I use a Creative Commons license for software?"

A: "Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software."

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

This sounds like a compelling reason to switch to a more appropriate license. What do the developers think?

(edited to add link to FAQ)
« Last Edit: June 01, 2008, 11:00:17 by Infidel » Logged
puremvc
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« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2008, 08:27:42 »

Hi,

Just so you know, on my list of things to do is revisiting the site-wide license.

I chose the Creative commons license because felt it was simple and straightforward. Granted I didn't spend nearly as much time researching licenses as I did researching patterns and prior art. While I'd used an awful lot of free software before, I hadn't ever actually taken the time to contribute any back to the community. That is to say I was a newbie at producing open source software, and essentially clueless at licensing it.

All I was concerned about was that it be free, that people be able to produce any sort of work with it at all and do what they want with it. I wanted to stipulate was that if the work was distributed in open form, the attribution be left in. For the most part CC Attribution 3.0 does what I wanted a license to do.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

says

You are free:

    * to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
    * to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

    *  Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
     
    * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
    * Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
    * Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.


The 'manner specified by the author or licensor': http://trac.puremvc.org/PureMVC/wiki/ManifoldProject/License

Then it became a community project, and I wanted to make sure that each project in the public repository was covered by the same license, and that the original author had attribution.

Thus far it hasn't been a huge problem. As far as I know no one has interpreted it as a license that restricts them from using it. But I have had to explain it a few times to make perfectly clear that there were no gotchas with doing a proprietary app based on it (there aren't) so I have come around to consider that perhaps another license would be better.

It's good that you open the issue as a thread like this and I hope others will join in, both contributors and users as to your thoughts on this. I want to make sure that this aspect of the project gets as much love as all the other bits fighting for attention.

Thanks,
-=Cliff>
« Last Edit: June 03, 2008, 08:29:34 by puremvc » Logged
lordnahkim
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« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2008, 08:53:39 »

Just so we're 100% clear on this...  I am permitted to write a piece of software with PureMVC at its core and resell the software for profit?
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Joel Hooks
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« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2008, 06:31:37 »

Just so we're 100% clear on this...  I am permitted to write a piece of software with PureMVC at its core and resell the software for profit?

Man... I hope so, otherwise I'm hatin it. :P

Cliff has stated on many occasions that you can do whatever you want with PureMVC as long as distributed source retains it's copyright headers. I'm sure you'd prefer to hear it from him, but that is the deal.
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http://joelhooks.com - my ramblings about developing with actionscript and python using pureMVC and django respectively.
puremvc
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« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2008, 07:32:19 »

I've recently opened a FAQ section which has a few entries on the license used. I'm on my phone or I'd link you to it, its just on the menubar at top.

-=Cliff>
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Tekool
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« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2008, 01:53:40 »

Cliff do you know that you could continue to use Creative Commons as a wrapper for a free software license ? It gives the easiness of CC with the complexity of the license you choose, like Creative Commons wrapper for GNU license : http://creativecommons.org/license/cc-gpl
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