On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 17:48, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
could you explain what exactly is artistic, literary or even creative about the sentence 'its both for me'?
It would take a long looooooong time to explain hence would do some other time (in jest, please don't take it seriously)
And before I am flamed for nitpicking, I would like to explain why I am flaming shirish:
I feel that by mindlessly releasing all his mails under a CC license he is guilty of trivialising and abusing the CC license which will bring it into disrepute. Strong words! But justified.
Some time back, the government mandated playing the national anthem after every film show. Then they stopped. Reason: people were walking out during the playing of the anthem and thus disrespecting it. The national anthem should be played only on important occasions so that the respect is maintained. Same with creative commons license - and GPL also. If you look at the home page of CC you will find this text:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing
this describes all the steps you have to take before releasing a work under the CC. Just putting it in a footer is mindless application of the license and an insult to the creators of the license.
You know what's funny. Its funny that how ideas change and how the interpretation changes over time. In 2005 when I started writing mails for support and whatever I asked on the CC mailing list as to which would be a good license and was told this one is good.
I don't want to get into debates of what's art, what's creativity because simply put its each to its own.
What would you call art and literature?
For me its the formation of words strung together in one's own fashion or understanding that makes it unique enough.
As for trivializing I really don't know, there are so many things being trivialized around me I just don't care.
Financial Governance, Stock Markets, the mailing list
So what happens if everyone follows Shirish and releases all their mails under CC? CC will cease to have any meaning at all. No one will respect it.
Its not question of a single license, its a perception and perceptions differs.
I would throw a classic behavior or pattern I have seen.
Have you seen the openclipart.org project ?
Now that is something that should have had tremendous growth but so many free software games I have seen they like to have their own repository and they use CC or some other license to protect themselves and most of them haven't been able to attract artists.
Why is that?
Please realise that the CC license has been crafted with great application of mind and care to ensure that genuine creativity be shared - and protected. Abuse of this license is an insult to the creators of the license and to the genuine artists who use it.
I had a conversation with a beautiful woman sometime back who works with struggling artists.
The artists know that if they make any painting and if its any good it would be copied instantly. Whether its painting or whatever shape.
The only use of CC they use is to let people know who actually made a painting and if that art could be used in some other dimension which the artist didn't think of (or just the possibility) . They are not thinking of protecting copyright because they just can't.
Times of India had been one of the worse plagarists and 99% of the time they don't pay a cent. Of course they are not the only publication in India. There are many more in the regional language. After all we have close to 3,500 newspapers (and god knows how many magazines and stuff)
This applies not only to CC but also to the GPL. I am often accused as being anti GPL. I am not. I feel that GPL is an extremely powerful weapon - and as a powerful weapon it should be used in the right place and at the right time. I wept tears of joy when Harald Welte won his suit against Dlink and ran around like a madman showing everyone in the centre the first Dlink device I bought which mentioned the GPL. Yes, mission critical stuff like the linux kernel or iptables belongs with the GPL. Not cut and paste stuff that is 98% of software that is written.
This is what Kenneth is talking about.
http://thinkingopen.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/d-link-found-to-have-violated-t...
The war is not over yet, there is whole new chapter with FSF going with Cisco (D-link is now owned by Cisco)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8857828/Comlaint-FSF-Cisco-GNU
Shirish has been candid enough to say that he will not change no matter how much I flame him. He has also said he is not bitter about the fact that I flame him. So why beat my head against a brick wall? Simple: he is incurable, but I am interested to make sure that the disease does not spread.
Cool.
So, think before you use/abuse licenses.
-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/