[CCD] new license(s), new list

[Chad Perrin]

So, in my last email to the list I discussed the possibility of creating
more than one license.  Thinking about it some more has led me to some
new ponderations:

Should I create a new list and move discussion there?  I'm thinking of a
"CopyWrite" list, as opposed to the current "CCD" list.  This occurs to
me because of the idea of having two or three licenses called "CopyWrite"
with only one of them being "CCD CopyWrite".  I also might want to move
the list from softwareliberationfront.org to copyfree.org if I change the
list, for a couple of reasons.

  1. The Software Liberation Front might be a little too polarizing a
  home for this list, ultimately.

  2. I've come to realize softwareliberationfront.org is a lot of typing
  for an email address, and copyfree.org is a lot shorter.

The thought of what terms should be present in licenses leads me to think
I should perhaps provide something like the following four options:

  1. Obviously, there's the CCD CopyWrite, which already exists.  It's
  the one with strong attribution and heritability requirements.  This
  license is a bit like the Creative Commons BY-SA license, but without
  the weird digital copy protection prohibition and with more explicit
  attribution requirements.

  2. Next would be something with strong attribution requirements but
  weak heritability requirements.

  3. Another would be a license with strong heritability but no explicit
  attribution requirements.  Attribution requirements are assumed rather
  than enforced, which in theory means you shouldn't try to take credit
  from others' works because you'd essentially be commiting plagiarism,
  but in practice means there isn't a whole lot of legal backup for that.

  4. Last would be a license with no explicit attribution requirements,
  and weak heritability -- essentially a modified BSD license in effect,
  but applicable to more than software.

So . . . is there a need for all four of those?  What would I call them?
I've already floated the idea of a "Freiheit CopyWrite" license described
by either number 2 or number 4 above (I hadn't really settled on which
way to go with it).

None of the above would be strictly equivalent to the public domain.
Number 4 would be the closest, but it would require that the direct
descendants of the licensed content would be similarly licensed the same
way the BSD license does, whereas modified versions of something in the
public domain can be copyrighted.  Numbers 1 and 3 would both have the
"viral" characteristics associated with the GPL, which in general would
mean nothing bad, but in practice would run afoul of "license
compatibility" concerns in that it would sometimes be very difficult to
include them in certain types of projects with other content subject to
license terms that are similarly "viral", et cetera.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others
we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of
ours, and this we should do freely and generously."