Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:07:38 +0530, Sandip Bhattacharya > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > >> Could you point me to some good references which discusses the issues >> FOSS purists find with Creative Commons, and which you find convincing >> enough? > > Foss purists? It does not advance your cause to use loaded > phrases like that; it implies you have much vitriol and little > substance to back your views.
It is not a loaded phrase. I meant it. I will explain my reason below. It is up to you to take it in a negative manner or not, but it need not be the intention I had. I should point out that idealists who do not compromise on their values/intentions have always been admired (and criticized) in history, and I consider DFSG purists to be admirable idealists(RMS/FSF being another example that comes to my mind). > Debian does not consider these licenses as free. If you are > truly interested in why we think so, here is a reference: > http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html Thank you for this reference. I had read the discussion before, but it was good to read the authoritative source. I read this and other views on the subject, and it helped me a lot to get the correct perspective. My earlier (mis)conception that CC Attribution (versions before 3.0) was similar to BSD/Apache, proved to be a bit out of place. It turns out that ambiguity in terms of that licence could prove to be a problem in real life cases. > Hopefully, version 3.0 of CC licenses will be free. We shall > see how that goes. Version 3.0 is out, and most of DFSG's arguments against CC-Attrib (especially the ambiguous credit withdrawal clause) are reported to be fixed. (I must confess I didn't read it myself. I have this strange aversion to the EBNF-like licence legalese). Anyway, the only current problem of debian-legal@ against CC is the anti-DRM clause and this is where my point of ideological purism lies. CC Attrib 3.0 still doesn't permit downstream versions to be distributed under any device with DRM-like features. debian-legal@ insists that there shall be absolutely no hindrances to downstream distribution, including well-intentioned hindrances like anti-DRM clauses(their arguments being fair-use situations like encrypted filesystems etc.). CC's coalition partners insist that anti-DRM clauses should not be removed. As an individual, I have every right to take my own position, and I consider the current "stand-off" between debian-legal@ and CC really sad. In my view both of them are on the same side, with similar intentions. If I was a machine(or a lawyer), I would have said "Not DFSG compatible! CC bad!". But I am a human, and I can make out intentions. If you take the case of encrypted filesystems, whose right is debian-legal@ defending? People who break into other's hard disk and try to snoop on others data? DFSG is an excellent and noble document. But it currently cannot catch these intention related issues. I would take it as my definitive and serious guideline when confronted with FOSS values issues. But still just as a guideline. But again, please forgive my ranting about DFSG and [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is just not restricted to Debian and DFSG. There have been similar frequent issues with licence incompatibility in the FOSS world before, explained very well at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709 In each such situations, it is upto the author to take a stand on what his intention is, what his values are and what compromises he can live with. Right now, I consider CC Attrib 3.0 to be my preferred licence to share my photos, text and other content, and I would recommend other like minded folks to do so, unless they are okay with the public-domain licence(the free-er the licence, the better for the commons). BTW, Yesterday wikipedia announced that "the Wikimedia Foundation Board has agreed with a proposal made by the Free Software Foundation that will permit Wikipedia (and other such wikis) to relicense under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." http://lessig.org/blog/2007/12/some_important_news_from_wikip.html - Sandip > >> As far as non-"freeware" royalty free content is concerned it would >> probably be better to stick to Creative Commons related resources, as >> alternative FOSS licences are both not as popular and neither as >> unambiguous. Just my point of view. > > Th relevant issue when peaking in a free software context is not > whether things are no cost, but whether adequate freedoms are > associated with the work. > > If all you care about is money, then of course you are > correct. If your interest is in freedom, then what you stated misses > the mark by a mile. _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22/23, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
