Spelling out the license - some geometry handlers

[Marielle Lange]

> License
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- 
> NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this  
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Hi David,

You will note that all stacks in the education gallery (<http:// 
revolution.lexicall.org/stacks_education.php>) are licensed under a  
similar share-alike license.

I attended a workshop on digital rights management a few months ago.  
Interestingly, it was there recommended to drop the non commercial  
unless you have good reasons to do so. Under a share alike commercial  
license, any person who makes use of your code in a commercial  
application is expected to make its source code available to the  
community. That's all benefits for the community at large, commercial  
and noncommercial.

Currently, the discussion is centered on an opposition between free  
and commercial. That's not the point. You can make you application  
open source and still require the payment of a license for the use of  
the compiled application. Nothing prevents you from make a very  
comfortable living out of your participation in open source projects.

The point of open source is about allowing others to re-use your  
code. Some commercial users may see it as a threat for their  
business. This is an error, I believe. By re-using some code rather  
than write an application from scratch, commercial developers can  
lower their license fees. In a sense, a move to open licenses could  
bring similar benefits than apple's move with iTune. Rather than ask  
customers to pay £20 for a full album, you propose them to pay £1 for  
the song you really want... and people all around the world spend  
more money buying songs one by one than they would have when having  
to pay £20 for an album with many tracks (features) they didn't  
really want (apparently even more money is spent on cheap ringtones  
than on music).

Open Source is not necessarily a threat to commercial developers.  
There will always be users who don't have the skills, desire or time  
to hack open source code. I liked Dan's answer to "why are we always  
creating another version of the same thing"... like we are always  
creating another version of the same sentence or the another version  
of the same painting. Phrases and paintings have been produced for  
centuries. Yet, people still make a living from being a writer or an  
artist. Yet, though pencils and papers are about free and easy to  
reuse and many many books exist to teach me how to paint, I am  
completely crap at it and will never be able to make a living out of  
any artwork I may produce. When I want to decorate my home, I don't  
go and buy brushes and canvas... I go and buy a nice painting  
produced by some skilled artist.

I don't believe the open source movement will kill the market. It  
will probably create new needs rather than answer all the ones  
computer users may have. Amateurs and Hobbyists will never be able to  
answer these needs as well as gifted programmers.

Likewise, I don't believe commercial developers are a threat to the  
open source movement. So why not change the license to Share alike  
rather than Share alike-Non commercial?

Marielle

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Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
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