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Comment by jruohonen | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

True enough; philosophically, I am still in the BY camp (a.k.a. BSD/MIT/etc.), and I do not particularly care about the NC part, but ND is increasingly important for non-code. But if they could do even the BY properly, it would be a step to the right direction (and, to some extent, I think they're doing that).

Huh. Can you elaborate why you view ND as increasingly important, whereas NC bothers you less?

Because for me, it would be the exact other way round.

ND is important for those who do "authoritative writing" (for a lack of a better term); i.e., when you write with your real name, you do not want nonsense and disinformation associated with your name.

Ah, yeah, in the meanwhile I've also googled your nick and saw that you're in academics.

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

Yes, I think of it more in the context of photo and video integrity, but you can certainly imagine an unscrupulous individual rewriting something and changing the meaning. Of course, I doubt a license would stop that person.

Doesn't CC BY require to say what you changed?

If a person would ignore one part of a license, they may also ignore other parts.

... Then why would they care that it's ND?

Not really. You're supposed to attribute the original creator. And if I did make major changes/additions I'd find some way to flag that. But you don't have a Github-style change log.

Not really, but you can't just distribute a changed version as if it were original. That's just as illegal as if it were ND.

I discussed NC in my other comment. But, yes, ND is arguably counter the whole remix culture that was supposedly part of the impetus for Creative Commons in the first place. I do kind of see the logic behind prohibiting, say, a remix of a video or photo in a way that misrepresents the subject. But I also don't particularly like it.

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.

I wouldn't use an NC photo on a big company stage or in a marketing campaign. But I sort of convinced myself I wasn't being directly paid for most of the presentations that I did and do, so it was OK enough. And I don't materially rework most photos or text.

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.

I recognize your nickname because I have always enjoyed your comments on Lisp on here, so I checked out the site and disappointingly because of topic and appearance, look like AI slop to me.

As there's no publication date listed, and I'm particularly intolerant to slop, can you recommend a book of yours published before Autumn 2022?

My older books have real photographs on them (e.g., https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp) and newer ones have AI generated covers and some have AI generated figures. Look for books with photos I have taken of nature - those are the old books (exception is Java AI book that is 90% very old material, but has a new AI generated cover).

In the last year I have started vibe coding a lot, but I still take personal ownership of my latest code examples because I set requirements and provide a design, and ask AI coding harnesses to let me run and test the code so I tweak it. Anyway, it still feels like mostly my code and I prefer the new AI + Mark code over what I used to produce.

This has been a strange ride! I learned to program in 1965 and have always loved coding, but it is a weird new world we live in, my friend.

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...

And NC doesn’t always work.

I use no commercial reuse (NC) yet years ago a polite young man from China emailed me letting me know that he was translating my stuff to resell under his name for money. To be honest, I didn’t mind and it made a good story to tell friends and family.

I had something similar happen with a book I wrote through a publisher. I went radio silence on him. Would have required contacting my publisher and I didn't need the hassle.

That's one of the reasons that defining NC broke down in the latest round of CC license revisions. Sure, even in the US, define NC as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. But that doesn't mean some mom-and-pop charity you agree with. It can easily mean a non-profit with goals you totally disagree with. And how about 501(c)(6)s like the NFL? And that's just US tax law.

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.

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