DHReutter

As I started my blog, I also had to choose the right license for the stuff I publish. Since I am an avid opposer of the idea of copyrights, I knew from the beginning, it would be a Creative Commons license. But this is by far not the only choice to be made.

First, I selected the by-nc-sa model, which lets you share and remix the work as long as you

1. mention my name (Attribution),
2. share it under a similar license (Share-Alike), and
3. do not gain any monetary value out of it (Noncommercial).

Sounds great, not lest because those moneybags won't get rich with my work. Then I discussed this issue with Uwe. I asked him why he chose the apparently inferior by-sa license, which allows commercial use. He pointed out that as long as the commercial users of the licensed material spread his work and as long as the work is still free, he doesn't care who spreads his work or if this person earns some bucks with it - to say it with Mr. T's words - he pities the fool who pays for it.

I pondered about this for a while and finally I decided to go with it. The last straw for my decision in favour for the by-sa license was really the fact that I normally consider the BSD licenses superior to the GPL, interestingly out of nearly the same reasons. Okay, to be fair, I normally prefer the BSD license because it means less hassle if someone wants to use the source code. But the same applies here - I don't have to think about using someone's work to create something new if it is licensed under the by-sa and even if I want to make money out of it (I am not a cheap bastard, actually I can be quite expensive) I am free to do so. So after applying philosophy 101, citing Kant and utilising the categorical imperative, I finally changed my overall license to the afore mentioned by-sa 3.0 license. You see, philosophy is good for something.

On this occasion, I would like to link to a CD from which I got the title of the blog, Pimp My Rights Vol. 1^{(german link)}. This is a compilation of CC'd music and also a nice overview of the different licenses, all represented by the funky icons next to the different tracks. It is the official soundtrack to the boycott of the music industry. Let it be said that I do not endorse this boycott, since this is a completely private decision everyone must make for himself.

HAND!