Return to Main

Why Open Licenses?
Am I Giving Away The Store?

by Stuart J. Whitmore
© 2004 by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc.

Background

If you have not yet read it, you may want to read the article on legal issues involved with photography, to understand the role of licenses with respect to your creative works. This article may not make a lot of sense without some understanding of copyright basics.

Overview of Open Licenses and the Notion of "Copyleft"

The topic of "copyleft" and "open licenses" as a whole is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worthwhile to understand that there is a lot more to it than the Video Liberty project. Whether you look at the roots of the Free Software movement, back in 1984, or the GNU/Linux operating system which came into being in the early 1990s, or something more recent like Creative Commons or the now-offline Open Music Registry (both founded in 2001), you will see that having an (unpaid) license for creative works is a concept that encompasses a wide range of works (software, photos, writings, etc.), and that there are many people interested in this alternative to strict corporate control of so-called "intellectual property."

If you aren't familiar with open licensing and the concept of copyleft, here are a couple of brief -- and probably arguable and/or over-generalized -- definitions:

Open licensing is an approach to licensing creative works that generally allows people to get and distribute as many copies of such works as they want, at no cost. (Contrast this to commercial music where you are required by implicit license and copyright law to pay for each copy.) Additional rights beyond copying and distribution are often included, also at no cost, but which rights are included depend on which license is chosen. Open licensing started with the "copyleft" approach, which includes open licenses that provide the right to create derivative works, but also have the requirement that you pass along the same freedom to others who receive those works from you.

Clear as mud? Here are two examples: This document is "open licensed" but The GIMP, a very powerful graphics and photo editor, is published under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the "classic" copyleft license. If this article was published under the GPL, you would be able to modify it before redistributing it, and you would be required to release your modified version under the GPL as well. However, it is instead published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 License, which does not include the right to modify or build upon the work, thus eliminating the question of whether your modified versions would have to be released under the same license. It could also have been released under an open license that denied both derivative works and commercial use; that sort of restriction is not possible under the copyleft principle.

The Question Is: Why?

A common question is, why would anyone want to just give away their creative works, and (depending on the license) let other people make money from their works without getting any of that money for themselves? And from another perspective, would anyone really want a product for free, especially if the source of the product is not well-known?

Some Answers for Creators

There are actually many reasons why creators might want to release their works under open licenses, and more than one reason may be applicable to any given work and creator. Some reasons include:

This is just a quick list of potential motivations for releasing a creative work under an open license, and there are probably countless others.

Some Answers for Consumers

The most obvious reason from the "consumer" perspective is that the products don't cost anything to obtain. It's pretty hard to beat the price of zero! There are also other valid reasons, most or all of which apply to a wide range of creative works, including software, music, photos, videos, and more. These reasons include:

Common Myths and Misperceptions

Open licensing is a complex topic, and some see it as an attack on their values (whether about capitalism, the value of their works, or whatever else). As a result, there are some common myths and misperceptions about open licensing. Some have come about by accident, and some have been put forth intentionally by those who do not want to see any further growth in support for open licensing. Regardless of how they came about, allowing them to stand unchallenged will only prevent you from understanding why you might want to use open licenses. Here are some that should be addressed:

If I publish one of my works under an open license, I have to publish all of them that way.
This is no more true than commercial publishers needing to price all of their products the same price. If you own the copyright, it is up to you to control how your work is licensed. You can certainly have a mix of open-licensed and "traditional" (commercial) works.
There is no way for me to make money if I publish my works under an open license. People who support open licenses just want to steal from artists and other creators; they don't think artists deserve to be compensated for their work.
This is also not true, although making money from an open-licensed work may require more creativity. Methods for capitalizing on an open-licensed work can include things like customization, support services, cross-promotion of works that aren't open-licensed, cross-promotion of supplemental products (tangible or otherwise), subscriptions, and more.
Open licenses are an attack on copyright laws and treaties.
This is not only false, it makes no sense, because open licenses require the force of such laws and treaties to be meaningful. Violation of an open license is just as much of a copyright violation as distributing unauthorized copies of music from a commercial artist.
Only low-quality or obscure creative works are published under an open license. The "good stuff" comes from commercial sources, carries a price tag, and is advertised on TV, in newspapers, etc.
There are many low-quality and obscure creative works that come from commercial sources and carry price tags. (Look for the discount bins at your local music, software, or video retailer!) There are also high-quality products published under various open licenses. Consider GNU/Linux, which has enough of a market share to apparently be of concern to Microsoft. Or consider OpenOffice.org (a high-quality office productivity suite), Celestia (a fun and educational astronomy program that is a fast hit with children), Mozilla (a high-quality Web browser), The GIMP (a powerful and easy to use image/photo editor), or Audacity (a powerful and easy to use audio file editor). There are many, many more open-licensed software products, this is just a small handful to demonstrate that the "good stuff" can be open-licensed. And those were just examples in software, and didn't include the many other types of creative works that can be released under an open license. (Users of Microsoft Windows may be interested in The Open CD, which bundles together a set of open-licensed software for use in Windows, including many of the titles listed above.)

In Closing

Open licensing will not work for every person or organization, or for every circumstance, or for every creative product. However, there are definitely situations in which open licensing provides an innovative solution to a problem, or will otherwise meet your needs or desires, either as a creator or as a consumer. It will be to your benefit to take the time to learn about the various open licenses available. If you obtain a work that is released under an open license, you should definitely take the time to understand the freedoms given to you, and any responsibilities that come with that freedom, according to the terms of the license.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.


Google
Web www.videoliberty.org
www.johnny-pixel.com