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jruohonentoday at 10:45 AM5 repliesview on HN

CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)


Replies

hypfertoday at 11:09 AM

ND is usually a bit sad, as it makes the thing a dead-end.

The magic of the web has always been that things would continuously morph through being reinterpreted and all, and that just doesn't happen with ND.

I can of course see the valid reasons why one would pick that license, but it's still.. kinda sad that it's culturally dead.

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mark_l_watsontoday at 2:05 PM

I have been releasing books under Creative Commons for 20+ years. Share alike, no modifications, no commercial reuse. I sell my books via Leanpub (my books https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson) and they can all be read free online (recommended to see if you like them), and if purchased the price can be reset to free, zero cost.

I like CC because I like my books to be read and I still make money. When people choose to pay I use that as a signal for which topics to put future effort into.

My wife has been my editor for ever, so this is a family business.

EDIT: over 20 years ago, I was what I think was Larry Lessig’s second ‘Featured Commoner’ and that was fun because they interviewed me and posted the interview in the CC web site.

RobotToastertoday at 1:50 PM

NC is a huge pain as it can be difficult to define commercial use, and it's often defined differently in different countries.

https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creati...

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ghafftoday at 11:10 AM

The problem is that not even Creative Commons was able to come up with a real definition for non-commercial when they last (I think) revised the license. Essentially it means trivial uses (a photo in a grade school assignment) or its contentious in a way that reasonable people can disagree about. What constitutes acceptable usage of a properly attributed photo? Personally, I just properly attribute and stopped worry about whether most presentations constituted commercial use or not.

Brian_K_Whitetoday at 1:45 PM

BY-SA

As both a consumer and producer, NC makes it kind of a pointless untouchable dead end even if I never intend to make a business out of something.

A lot of unintended things could be argued as commecial and who wants to risk it? If I do something purely as ahobby, and along the way make a youtube video about it, and that video pays money, I suddenly become techically in violation of non-commercial. Or I use it in a class where I was paid to teach. Or any number of ordinary possible uses that along the way do involve an exchange of money.

Let alone the freedom to change my mind in 5 years and decide I do want to sell something I made that initially I didn't.

I don't know what I might want to do tomorrow, so best to just not invest any of my time or effort into anything that might bite me later.

ND is 100x worse. Why even bother publishing a design at all then? Just sell your commercial propeietary product, and any users who want the plans you can just sell them more service for support and customization instead.

So I only apply BY-SA to be as similar to classic GPL as possible, and it's no problem at all if there is a business that can't accept the SA terms. It doesn't prevent selling a product, it just prevents being a dick and a thief (well on paper anyway, of course they go ahead and steal anyway but that's a different problem).

If I ever had something where I didn't want anyone else to be able to sell it, I just wouldn't publish it at all in the first place.

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