A fascinating license question

[Warren Schudy]

We have 3 related issues:
1) Should CZ sell more permissive licenses?
2) What license should we offer for free?
3) How should CZ pay its bills?

For #1, I think the answer should be no. If FSF signed a contract with Microsoft that allowed MSFT to use the GCC source code in MSFT's commercial products, the community would naturally feel cheated. From a moral point of view, the FSF did not create gcc by themselves, so they are bound by the GPL, just like everybody else.

For practical reasons, the FSF has legal ownership over GCC to allow them to change the license as the community learns the proper way to translate the open source idea into precise licenses. Relicensing GCC to third parties in exchange for money is using the relicensing power for something different than it was intended for.

I think the same idea would apply if the CZ sold licenses. Morally, the CZ content is owned by the authors that created it and the world at large, not by the CZ foundation, so CZ does not have the moral right to license the CZ content under a non-copyleft license. This is why people object to CZ selling content but think it's fine for others to profit from our content.

For #2, I don't care too much per se. However, having only a restrictive license available for free would increase the temptation to violate #1, so I'm inclined to go for GFDL or cc-by-sa.

For #3, the most important thing is maintaining editorial independence. It's not clear to me how the risk of editorial influence compares between:
* selling our content to news organizations
* accepting donations
* Google ads
* "sponsored by" messages

I think the best defense for editorial independence is the ability of someone to fork CZ if CZ loses its independence. To maintain that, CZ and a fork of CZ should have as near as possible identical rights so they can compete on their merits.

Therefore, I would like to see a written statement in our principles that authors are licensing contributions to CZ under an open-source license of CZ's choice, not giving them to CZ with no restrictions. To the extent that this written statement is binding, it would be illegal for CZ to sell its content under a non-open-source license. Therefore a fork of CZ could do everything CZ does except for switching open-source licenses, and hence a corrupted CZ could be replaced.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

You say (wrongly) that I want CZ to control who can and can't use CZ's content for profit.  But that isn't the issue I'm asking you to evaluate.  The issue isn't whether someone controls who uses CZ's content, but rather, whether CZ will be compensated for its use.  Suppose we establish a policy that allows anyone whatsoever to use it to make a profit, if they pay the fees.

I said from the beginning that it's impossible to properly answer your question without an alternative.  I think using CC-BY-SA is a good idea, and I can't think of a better one, but if someone has a better idea I'd be willing to listen to and offer my opinion on it.

If CZ establishes a policy that allows anyone whatsoever to use CZ content to make a profit, if they pay the fees, and those fees are based on a percentage of net profits, I think that's much better than using an NC license and requiring CZ approval to make any commercial use of content, but I'm not sure it's better than CC-BY-SA.  If this is a serious consideration, let us know and give us some time to think about and discuss it.  It'd throw out many of the arguments in favor of an NC-only license, as you'd now be allowing people to "profit of the backs of volunteers", as long as they kickback some to the foundation, but it'd also throw out many of the arguments against an NC-only license, as anyone in the world who wanted to use the content could do so without getting permission from some board or something.

I'd have to think about it.

"Freely available to all" is, however, ambiguous.  It's of course freely available to read; under a noncommercial license, it would be freely available to all noncommercial reuse and redevelopment, which enables another (non-profit) project to fork our content under the same license.  The question is whether, in addition to these crucial, important freedoms, we should insist that it be free to everyone to use commercially.

It's unclear to me to what extent that's true, though.  Non-profit organizations can and do make profits, they just don't distribute those profits to shareholders.  At what point does an action trigger the "commercial" clause?  If I started a non-profit to compete with Citizendium, would there be any limit on what I could do with the content?

[Stephen Ewen]

Non-profit organizations can and do make profits, they just don't distribute those profits to shareholders. 

Just so this is taken how Anthony probably means it:  Non-profit organizations may generate revenue for their legally-defined non-profit activities.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

Non-profit organizations can and do make profits, they just don't distribute those profits to shareholders. 

Just so this is taken how Anthony probably means it:  Non-profit organizations may generate revenue for their legally-defined non-profit activities.

That's definitely not how I meant it.  Generating revenue and generating profits are two different things.  Non-profits are not categorically restricted from doing either.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Non-profit organizations can and do make profits, they just don't distribute those profits to shareholders. 

Just so this is taken how Anthony probably means it:  Non-profit organizations may generate revenue for their legally-defined non-profit activities.

That's definitely not how I meant it.  Generating revenue and generating profits are two different things.  Non-profits are not categorically restricted from doing either.

This is all legalistic semantics. Whereas legal issues wil have to be resolved at some point, the issue here is the purposes to which any possible revenues should be put, should such occur from the licence chosen.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

Non-profit organizations can and do make profits, they just don't distribute those profits to shareholders. 

Just so this is taken how Anthony probably means it:  Non-profit organizations may generate revenue for their legally-defined non-profit activities.

That's definitely not how I meant it.  Generating revenue and generating profits are two different things.  Non-profits are not categorically restricted from doing either.

This is all legalistic semantics. Whereas legal issues wil have to be resolved at some point, the issue here is the purposes to which any possible revenues should be put, should such occur from the licence chosen.

My point in bringing this up was to question Larry's statement that works under an NC license "would be freely available to all noncommercial reuse and redevelopment, which enables another (non-profit) project to fork our content under the same license".  This particular legal issue (what can and can't be done under an NC license) needs to be addressed before such a license can be chosen.

[RJensen]

If some corporation pays us $$$ then most of that money should go to the authors--we are the ones doing the work after all.  It's our writing and creativity that is at issue.  So why should CZ central get most of the money?

[Geoffrey Plourde]

Lets put it this way. While the work is done by the authors, the authors do not have massive server bills to pay. Plus the amount of tax statements necessary would eat up all the revnue collected.

On another note, I still believe a copycenter license has advantages in that it is more free than the GFDL or CC by SA and more adaptable. 

[Geoffrey Plourde]

To illustrate what I am thinking of in terms of licensing, here is a mockup.

CITIZENDIUM COPYRIGHT POLICY(Proposed)

Citizendium encourages the reuse of its material as set forth below. If your intended use may violate a provision, please contact the General Counsel!

1. Citizendium grants a non-exclusive license to you to use any of the content (other than images) on this site with attribution for non commercial and small scale commercial purposes without charge. This license is revocable only in very rare instances of self-defense, such as protecting continued use by Citizendium editors or other licensees, enforcement of other provisions of this license ,or stopping unauthorized copying or mirroring of entire parts of this site.

2. Large scale commercial copying of any portion of this site is prohibited without authorization of the General Counsel through entrance into a Partnership Agreement and payment of compensation as set by the aforementioned Agreement.

3. By contributing information to Citizendium, you irrevocably consent to the display, copying, reuse or editing of your information, edits and entries, with or without attribution.

4. Content is copyrighted under the laws of the United States of America, as such you agree to be bound by applicable US laws and to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, sitting in the City of San Francisco, State of California.

5. You agree to waive and indemnify this and all affiliated sponsors, editors, users, or sites from claims for liability resulting from use, by you, of the content contained herein.
 
6. This is a binding legal document! By using this site you agree to be bound by it. Citizendium may clarify and amend its copyright from time to time by updating this document here.
 
7. Notwithstanding the terms imposed by any other portion of this policy, images remain protected by the copyrights of their creators and are used here for educational "fair use" purposes.

[Larry Sanger]

Just a quick comment!

If some corporation pays us $$$ then most of that money should go to the authors--we are the ones doing the work after all.  It's our writing and creativity that is at issue.  So why should CZ central get most of the money?

That is what I have proposed.  If we choose a license that allows a corporation to pay us, then that money would go into the hands of the contributors, who would decide--through a representative body--how it is spent.  To say that it should go into the hands of individual contributors would require a lot more argument.

You're also the second person to make this point and the second to utterly fail to see the irony in it.  You object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

[Joe Quick]

Just a quick comment!

If some corporation pays us $$$ then most of that money should go to the authors--we are the ones doing the work after all.  It's our writing and creativity that is at issue.  So why should CZ central get most of the money?

That is what I have proposed.  If we choose a license that allows a corporation to pay us, then that money would go into the hands of the contributors, who would decide--through a representative body--how it is spent.  To say that it should go into the hands of individual contributors would require a lot more argument.

You're also the second person to make this point and the second to utterly fail to see the irony in it.  You object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

Direct versus indirect exploitation?  GE would be exploiting CZ, but the Citizendium would be exploiting me!

I don't think that way, by the way.  I've been pretty quiet on the issue because my only real concern is that the knowledge contained within Citizendium be quickly and freely available to as many people as possible and I haven't figured out for myself whether a non-commercial license would help or hinder effrts toward such a goal.  I think that a commercial-allowable license would accomplish this better (simply because it would be out there in more places for more people to see) but I'm really not sure.

The way this particular thread is framed makes the whole thing kind of silly, in my mind.  If we are assuming that CZ contains millions of articles and thousands of approved articles, then presumably we're already doing just fine.  Allowing or disallowing commercial use isn't going to make a huge difference in how visible or successful we are.  The better question is which type of license is going to get us to that point quickest; that's where my thoughts remain unclear.  I couldn't care less if people make money off of my efforts here as long as those people don't get in the way of others who would benefit from quick, easy, free access to it.

[Stephen Ewen]

Direct versus indirect exploitation?  GE would be exploiting CZ, but the Citizendium would be exploiting me!

You would be exploiting yourself?

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

OK, in response to Joe's rather different sort of point. Let us assume that CZ has adopted a licence which merely requires attribution, even for commercial use. In the process of developing CZ, we go through rather different versions of articles: as happens with WP now, people take snapshots of the site and reproduce the contents with attribution.

But suddenly, we get a shock! One of our crappiest unapproved articles -- full of stupidities which were rapidly removed -- has got onto other websites and is being attributed to CZ. In the meantime, we had decided to push through a really good approved version of that same rather important article. Larry [if he is still Editor-in-Chief] will then try to explain to the press that the other versions are "wrong" and the "proper" article is only on CZ....

Do we really want to go through nonsense like this? We need to control what happens to the content of CZ and also prevent commercial interests from taking advantage of us. For me, this is in principle a simple matter which is being made unnecessarily complex.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Haha to Stephen's comment! No, I agree with Joe's distinction on the grounds of proximity, rather than direct or indirect. By analogy, we might accept paying too high a price to a certain William Gates, but we would kick up a fuss if it was a local shop whose owner we knew well...

[Stephen Ewen]

And that local shop owner is right-sure responsive to his local customers.  He has to be or he'll go out of business.  MegaCorp, on the other hand, is responsive to an an entirely different set of voices and interests, and has to be or they'll go out of business. 

At any rate, the analogy is very flawed.  It's more like a community-owned non-profit cooperative rather than a local shop under a proprietor.