Open Source, Free Software and soon.. Commonware

From Creative Commons, this announcement of a discussion group led by Marshall Van Alstyne of MIT, concerning creative commons licenses specifically for software.   There are already multiple off-the-shelf licenses meant to express "some rights reserved" for software, but these tend to be one-size-fits-all, and, in the case of the GPL, even intentionally ambiguous.  Even some experienced software licensing attorneys to locate "open" license at the far edge of the map, where it says "Here there be Dragons" and try to avoid the issue of their scope altogether by just saying "no."  The beauty of a creative commons license is that humans, even lawyers, can understand its scope instantly.   The discussion group's goals are lofty.  "More than just a set of interesting debates,
we'll also try to build models of the processes of software growth and
diffusion.  Thus the process of license design itself should become a kind
of recursive open science."   Good luck, Doc!