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the N in NC and ND stands for "never use these"
From my understanding, Solderpunk made his intentions clear, that he didn't want derivative specs that *look like* the official spec spreading around that made changes and fooled people into believing it's an official spec. The goal of the license is to convey these wishes, not to sue people over anything, as solderpunk already stated.
Now, about ND: The point is not about disallowing all summaries of the spec, but about preventing derivatives from *looking like* the spec but making small changes that have a large impact. Emphasis on the *looking like* an official spec part! Everyone can tell a summary or wikipedia entry from a mile away, but that's not the point of ND.
The point is to allow unmodified redistribution but disallow modified redistribution. No other CC license without the ND specifier does this.
About NC: If the copyright holder is more lenient than the license, then there's literally no problem as the copyright holder determines what they allow. It's only if the license is more lenient than what the copyright holder thinks the license is saying where this becomes an actual problem. The license happens to be stricter than some might want, but that's not a problem if the copyright holder is more lenient (and expresses this leniency so people are aware).
ND and NC do actually have good uses, particularly outside of text, but this whole post just judges these licenses based only on the idea that the only artform that ever exists is writing, lmao. What?!
Yes, summaries and wikipedia entries are not derivatives. That's literally the point. ND by definition doesn't allow *derivatives* and doesn't touch non-derivatives, so to say that the problem with the license is that it doesn't care about non-derivatives... well, that's literally just the definition of ND.
ND's use is when one wants to disallow derivatives while still *allowing unmodified redistributions.*
The terms of a copyright license are worthless if you are not willing to take people to court over them.
This is not true. A license is still useful by telling people what your wishes are, even if you do not have the means or desire to sue people.
Tl;dr: I believe there is a misunderstanding of solderpunk's intentions, which is not to stop summaries and wikipedia entries of the spec, or unmodified (and NC) redistributions, but to stop unofficial derivative specs from masquerading as official specs by fooling people into believing its the official spec *through using large portions of the wording and language of the official spec.* Share-alike does not solve this problem.
Also "all rights reserved" without a license doesn't convey that one can redistribute the spec unmodified. This is literally why ND exists. I repeat "redistribution" many times in this post for a reason.
Oct 05 · 3 months ago