I strongly believe in CopyLeft. I don't
believe in the GPL
or in the "Share-Alike"
that Creative Commons
uses.
The Scene
Basically, CopyLeft generally refers to Copyright licenses that
provide some people some rights. If I copyright something, it's
mine--a photo or this blog post--you can't use it unless you ask me
and I let you. CopyLeft means that I have a copyright but I also
provide a license for ways that you can use it.
The GPL (which is used by Linux and what is often linked with
"free" or open-source software), is a CopyLeft license which is
used for software and usually means that you don't pay any money to
use the GPL-ed software.
Creative Commons, also has several CopyLeft licenses that you
can use to license thing. I especially like it that you can start
at their website and in less than a minute you can have a "deed"
for whatever you want to license (they give you code to put on a
blog or webpage and it links to a deed which is basically the
simplified legalese that is the "real" legal license). One of the
options that CC provides is "Share-Alike."
Share Alike is similar to part of what is build in to the GPL,
so I'm just going to talk about them as though they are the same
(which they aren't). Looking at an SA (Share-Alike) deed on CC:
Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build
upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under
the same, similar or a compatible license.
That sounds nice in theory. Let's say you're a musician and you
write an instrumental piece. You use a CC-SA license on it and
therefore people can use it - so long as, if they add to it (let's
say they grab it and use it as background music for a video that
they then post on You-Tube) they also have use a Share-Alike
license. AND...
My Beef
And any other settings you chose. Let's say you choose a
Non-Commercial license (which I think are good in some instances) -
so you've got a NC-SA CC
License on your music. A person comes along and wants to use
your music in something else (the video), they can't then charge
money for that video. That may sound OK, but then you're
restricting their usage and is that really "free" anymore? I don't
think it is. And there is a lot of talk about "free" software under
the GPL meme.
Where this happens for me is in software projects. There is a
lot of good open-source code and I'm at a point where I'd rather
take existing open-source software and add something to it. But, if
that software is GPL or CC-SA then I'm limited in where/how I can
use it.
The Reason (as I understand it)
The advocates of this type of license might say that it's only
free if it stays free forever (no one comes along and tries to sell
it and lock it down) - and that's the point of this kind of
license. CC, to their credit, are less "preachy" about Share-Alike
and instead it's just 1 option and is only in 2 of their
7 licenses.
This works logically: if you accept the starting premise that
all software should be free, then any license should ensure
that.
I don't buy that starting premise: in this world, you should be
able to charge for software (it makes it easier to pay the
mortgage). If you accept that, then the concept of adding something
of value on to something else of value, should give you the right
to re-license as you see fit. That new stuff is yours and if
someone wants the previous version (not yours) that is more openly
licensed, they can do that too.
In this sense, I think the "free" software available via the GPL
isn't free if you want to expand on it: it comes at a price.
The Real Problem: The Market
And that price won't work for the market (I'm talking about the
general market here). If a company is looking to build software,
they are building it for a reason: to fill a need in the market.
Once they build that software, more than likely, they are going to
charge for it.
If they build it all themselves, they can charge for it: they
can license it however they want.
And that sounds fine except for one detail: software routinely
performs the same tasks. That is, any software that you look to
build has parts that other programs do too. If you own multiple
computer programs (as in, you built them), you can re-use the same
computer code in both programs.
If you can borrow from the general public (in the form of free
licenses) then you can maybe save that time (& cost - which
could be passed to users). Now, you wouldn't always do this -
sometimes it makes sense to start from scratch. But, with GPL
software, it is less attractive to do this.
It's sort of like if in the medical community - where they
publish new medical findings publicly - if they said, on some
findings, "You can use this information from this study - only if
you agree not to charge for treatment." That would never work -
honest doctors would be forced to do the research themselves prior
to using the new method or drug (or not charge for treatment -
which doesn't work so well for doctors who want to continue being
doctors or buy syringes and have a building in which to provide
treatment). This would greatly hamper the general human forward
progress on new medicine.
But that's what GPL (and CC-SA in some scenarios) does: it says
that you can use it for free only so long as you pass it along to
others for free (strictly speaking: you can charge for it, but you
have to provide the source as well - which means someone else can
pick it up and redistribute it [for free]). It sounds nice in
theory: share in the same way you got it, but it doesn't make for
good sharing when you start introducing entities (people &
companies) that need to make money to survive. Or, Bill Gates' summary of this aspect of
the GPL: "Open source creates a license so that nobody can ever
improve the software." I think that's an overstatement but in these
terms, you can't improve the software: since you can't make money
doing it - so you leave it alone.
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