The issue is that we have been called parasites, yet we haven't done anything parasitic—in fact, short of asking for feedback, we haven't done anything at all. We are asking for feedback because we don't want to be parasitic. We understand there will some people who will never be comfortable with us using their stuff, some who wish to be compensated, some are happy to allow LessWrong [management] to decide what's in their interest and some who are happy to freely allow us to use their material, perhaps subject to some restrictions.
What's offensive is you using loaded terms to those who are actively trying to engage with you to maximize the utility for the community. If the end result is that there are no terms beneficial to both us and the community, so be it. The premise that we'd like to use your stuff with no benefit to you is incorrect. We would rather not pursue our business model than be parasites.
That was why we created this discussion in the first place.
If you've been following the announced partnership between LessWrong and Castify, you'll know that we would like to start offering the promoted posts as a podcast.
So far, everything offered by Castify is authored by Eliezer Yudkowsky who gave permission to have his content used. Because promoted posts can be written by those who haven't explicitly given us permission, we're reluctant to offer them without first working through the licensing issues with the community.
What we propose is that all content on the site be subject to the Creative Commons license which would allow content posted to LessWrong to be used for commercial use as long as the work is given proper attribution.
LessWrong management and Castify want feedback from the community before moving forward. Thoughts?
Edit: EricHerboso was kind enough to start a poll in the comments here.