Is it all about the licenses?
Many explanations of Creative Commons make it sounds simple, walk through the questions of the chooser, and out plops the correct license. Go share. It does work well.
But deeper understanding often leads to greyer area, where the answers spiral down to technical and jargon related insider language. We are not suggesting five as the optimum age to frame answers to conceptual questions.
This week’s challenge actually comes from a tweeted response or just a call for explanation from Aaron Davis, and educator and openness advocate from Melbourne, Australia. I have never met Aaron, but we sure talk a lot online. He asked qith the #CCQuest tag:
Can anyone explain the difference b/n #opensource & @creativecommons cc @cogdog #ccquest
— Aaron Davis (@mrkrndvs) December 5, 2016
I waited a few days before jumping in, but for a online community to thrive, you should never let asked questions sit un-attended to. As always, I start by looking around, and found of course a solid answer in the Creative Commons FAQ
@mrkrndvs Some overlap but software needs terms on distribution not in @creativecommons https://t.co/huBbEF19so #ccquest
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 5, 2016
What I get from the answer is that software licenses have requirements that Creative Commons licenses do not include, so it suggests other open source license options, recommending that CC not be used for software. But the language is a bit heavy on license jargon. Would a high school student understand this? It answers the question in the FAQ, but does not really get into an understanding of why these licenses are different.
I found another blog post which added some more insight, that the NC and ND Creative Commons licenses are incompatible with hardware
@mrkrndvs See also conflicts btwn ND NC licenses and hardware https://t.co/DnikVKb9LW #ccquest
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 5, 2016
I’m thankful that Aaron took the lead to post a question; this idea of having a community and space where questions and answers could flow between members, not just from a single source FAQ, could thrive.
So let’s help Aaron (and others)?
flickr photo shared by opensourceway under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license
Quest Number 10
#CCquest 10: Explain it Like I’m Five? Difference Between Open Source and Creative Commons https://t.co/YKhJNAVkpl pic.twitter.com/ne4IFZrZVp
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 6, 2016
And we can let Aaron tell us if this is useful.
Selected Responses
@cogdog but at a “5 year old”, non-technical level, the answer is: there is no difference, both are about sharing stuff openly #ccquest
— Alek Tarkowski (@atarkowski) December 7, 2016
@cogdog @creativecommons actually no :
Free Software = Open Source + ethics— François Revol (@mmu_man) December 7, 2016
One person’s feeding into the community (opensource) & the community feeding into one person’s work (CC). Both go both ways though! #ccquest https://t.co/IaYyHBgmOg
— Olga Belikov (@olgamariab) December 7, 2016
#ccquest 10: open source promotes free software and CC more about sharing widely w/out restriction.
— Brandon Dorman (@dormanmath) December 17, 2016
#ccquest 10 I'd go so far as to say the GPL would not be a good CC license due to the strong no commercial aspect
— Brandon Dorman (@dormanmath) December 17, 2016
Featured Image: flickr photo by opensourceway https://flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/7496803778 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license By the way, this flickr account has a wealth of fantastic images about openness, open source, even cows… and all are licensed for reuse under Creative Commons
