Hows that for a title which demands that you know what its all about?
Richard Stallman (RMS) was recently interviewed in LinuxP2P and was asked “…what differences are there between generic CC licensing and the GPL?”
Some Creative Commons licenses are free licenses; most permit at least noncommercial verbatim copying. But some, such as the Sampling Licenses and Developing Countries Licenses, donâ??t even permit that, which makes them unacceptable to use for any kind of work. All these licenses have in common is a label, but people regularly mistake that common label for something substantial.
This has caused a minor blog/email rumble of surprise that RMS is against CC. (Its even on Slashdot). I know of, respect and support RMS views. Even though I am project lead for CC Sweden I am also a member of FSF Sweden team and I dont see any contradictions with this or any contradictions in RMS on this topic. Therefore I am a bit surprised at the effect RMS’s statement has caused.
CC cannot be understood as one principle. It is a set of licenses offering the user many different options. The GPL is more ideologically stringent and therefore one can be “for” the GPL on ideological or political grounds. Claiming to be “for” CC on ideological or political grounds can only mean that you are for a simple licensing system which helps creators which is admirable but hardly as ideologically deep as creating an accessible infrastructure based for all.