I agree that a CC-BY licence is better (without the “noncommercial” restriction). I am chipping in because I’m not biased the same way as you are, except that I read content on the Forum much more often than I write it :)
The purpose of copyright was to encourage people to make creative works. We don’t rely on financial interest to encourage people to post here—it’s a prestige-based system instead, which seems to be working very well. Moreover, if we want the Forum to be a vehicle for disseminating ideas, copyright rules militate against that. I see many more reasons for switching to a CC licence than not doing so.
As for why I prefer not having the “noncommercial-only” restriction, it’s because I don’t want people not to reuse work from the Forum (with attribution) because they’re unsure whether want to do with it counts as commercial. We should err on the side of sharing info freely.
Update: I do, however, agree with those who think that the CC licence should apply only to new threads. It would not respect the consent of previous contributors to put a CC licence on content already on the Forum, and I’m not sure it’s even legal to do so.
I agree that a CC-BY licence is better (without the “noncommercial” restriction). I am chipping in because I’m not biased the same way as you are, except that I read content on the Forum much more often than I write it :)
The purpose of copyright was to encourage people to make creative works. We don’t rely on financial interest to encourage people to post here—it’s a prestige-based system instead, which seems to be working very well. Moreover, if we want the Forum to be a vehicle for disseminating ideas, copyright rules militate against that. I see many more reasons for switching to a CC licence than not doing so.
As for why I prefer not having the “noncommercial-only” restriction, it’s because I don’t want people not to reuse work from the Forum (with attribution) because they’re unsure whether want to do with it counts as commercial. We should err on the side of sharing info freely.
Update: I do, however, agree with those who think that the CC licence should apply only to new threads. It would not respect the consent of previous contributors to put a CC licence on content already on the Forum, and I’m not sure it’s even legal to do so.