A fascinating license question

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Sorry, Joe: these are not personal criticisms. I think the real problem is that people think CZ should be like WP with small changes, and have not grasped that the underlying principles of CZ are different.

[Aleta Curry]

I find this extraordinary.

Are some of m'learned friends actually arguing that they place CZ's possibly generating income to a) ensure our continued existence b) continue to disseminate knowledge c) assist the community (us) in all sorts of enriching, mind-stretching endeavours, with the making of money from material they have in no way earned or contributed to by some of the commercial multi-nationals?  Seriously?

Richard, I'd like to speak to something you wrote pages back.  Something about your use of free resources on the web and CZ's obligation to "give back" in kind.  First of all, it does--that is, we do: we "give back" information free to individuals, not corps.  Second, your example is not analogous.  You, an individual, access resources which are free to individuals.  You then (unless you're telling us porkies), read, analyse, determine what you should use, organise, synthesize, whatever and then you create.  Of your charity and good pleasure you then license that work to other individuals. You, Richard, have done that.  GE, Google, Microsoft, Acme Int'l, whatever, HAS NOT taken a complete package of information, giftwrapped it, and presented it to CZ for dissemination to humanity.

The fact is, my dear professor, you like teaching.  I know that because you're retired and you're still teaching.  You're teaching free.  If you didn't have access to the internet, you'd get off your a* and go to a library.  If you couldn't do that, you'd still share from your extensive personal knowledge.  I will hazard a guess that if someone needed your help and couldn't afford it, you'd give it free.  These business don't give free; they get good money for it.  Very different.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

As usual, Aleta, you have hit the nails on their heads [poor nails]. There is a fundamental difference between free distribution of knowledge, which is one of my own principles, and being stupid enough to allow corporations to take your work and make vast profits from it. There is also a fundamental difference between [for exampe] Google, which I presume none of us has any influence over, and CZ which we all have some sort of influence over. To mix up or equate these things is crazy.

Insofar as academics are concerned, we have a tendency to want to leave commercial things to commerce. In terms of comparative advantage, this is fine: my advice to Richard is to leave it to Larry and others, who have a grip on the commercial aspects. It would be a last resort, an act of desperation, to allow CZ to be disseminated by multinationals!

[Stephen Ewen]

If CZ is to stipulate a copyright transfer

Transfer has never even been raised.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Just a quick comment on this:

My problem with CZ ownership of content (and the reason I suspended work on CZ a few months back until the issue is resolved) is that it leaves the content creator potentially unable to use his/her own work in other ways, for example, on other wikis. If I were to write an article and contribute it to CZ under a copyright transfer system, then I would not necessarily be free to use the material elsewhere (because of license incompatibilities, to mention just one potential problem).

I cannot easily understand what this is about. When I transfer copyright to a commercial publisher, this is for an entire article or book. I have the freedom to use some of the content elsewhere, which sometimes I do. The restriction on copyright concerns the entire article: but there is no entire article with a sole author on CZ or WP. Even if you are the main author, you are not recognised as such, so where is the copyright issue?

However, as I have understood it and Stephen also comments, there will not be copyright transfer to CZ.

If the issue is about being able to use identical material on multiple websites, my question is: do we really want people to be able to do that? I am not sure of the answer, so I merely point it out here.

[Joe Quick]

Sorry, Joe: these are not personal criticisms. I think the real problem is that people think CZ should be like WP with small changes, and have not grasped that the underlying principles of CZ are different.

I actually didn't mean to snap back like that.    But thank you for the apology anyway. 

You've come down on the side of a non-commercial license for (glancing back over 7 pages of discussion) two basic reasons: 1) control over our content and 2) financial security.  Is that right?  I find the first less than persuasive and the second pretty good.

On control over our content, you've suggested a couple of scenarios in which we (the project) end up looking foolish because of something that someone else does with our content.  We obviously don't want to publish foolish content but I think we can all agree that something is bound to slip through eventually anyhow.  So we'll have to deal with it when it happens.  I don't see how a non-commercial license is going to make any difference when that time comes (unless someone decides to sell t-shirts demonstrating how dumb CZ is).  Commercial-allowable and non-commercial copyleft licenses both allow others to republish our content, non-commercial just means that fewer others will publish it.  I'd rather have lots of copies of our many good articles out there than be slightly more effective at hiding our one or two blemishes.

The second argument, about financial security, I find much more (but not totally) convincing.  If I thought that funding and donations would be rare, I would be much more likely to support a non-commercial license  so that we could sell the rights to use our content commercially.  Still, I can't foretell the future, so financial security might be a good idea.

On both points, I think a comparison to the Wikipedia experiment is revealing even though, as you point out, we are a very different enterprise.  Wikipedia has put out a lot of embarrassing content, and though I expect that we will have much further to fall than they do, they have weathered several nasty storms without taking on too much water.  And we'll be far more mature about addressing any problems that arise than they have been.  Wikipedia also does just fine by surviving on donations and we can expect to have much more support from universities and foundations than they do because of our more scholarly and mature mission.

[Stephen Ewen]

Wikipedia also does just fine by surviving on donations and we can expect to have much more support from universities and foundations than they do because of our more scholarly and mature mission.

Who wants just to survive??  I want to thrive and have the freedom to do things for world education that only comes from robust finances.  Does Wikipedia really do that?  No!  They're too busy surviving and depending upon the free market to use free material, which has done scant nothing to actually get free as in education to those who need it most. 

And let's think about this money from foundations.  Do you realize when you allow GE to use CZ without paying into it, what you are essentially doing is transferring some of the money from foundations and universities to pay GE?  Don't you think foundations think of this sort of thing and its a harder sell to get funds from some??  Sheesh, they're asking *us* for a $300,0000 grant but did not have the basic good sense to take measures with their license so they could license use of CZ to GE for $2-million?  And now they're asking *us* to help make up for that stupid decision?  Next application on the pile, please!  Hence my contention all along that a non-commercial license means more grants, *plus* revenue from licensing to GE. 

As for money from universities - for obvious reasons, I hope, this is much less likely to materialize if CZ is under a commercial-allowable license.  Plus it has the issue as described with foundations.

GE just an example here, of course.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

No problems, Joe: I think we have a pretty good working relationship. I avoided making simple points for one simple reason [lol], which is that I am still working on my reasons. My reaction to the situation is partly logical and partly a "gut reaction", which I always trust.

So: taking point (1) that you attribute to me. Control over content. Why is this important?

My feeling is that it is important for a lot of reasons, and most of us are making the (human) mistake of takling WP as an example of how things work. In the case of CZ, control over content is important for the following reasons:

(a) we claim to be authoritative [at least for approved articles] by virtue of expert guidance, so the implications for us of poor articles are greater than for WP
(b) WP has made a global impact by virtue of its free access, rapid rise, multiple amateur contributors, rapid dissemination across multiple websites. CZ cannot even begin to rival this, nor should we try. Our approach is one of quality control and free access for the end-user: this does not imply free duplication of material across multiple websites, although it does not preclude it either
(c) If we allow non-commercial duplication of material, it is somehow less costly in terms of reputation than if poor material is located on commercial sites. This has always been WP's defence, that it is non-commercial. What do you expect from a free crap site? etc etc

On your second point about finances, I do not know how well WP is doing with that either now or in the future. Quite simply, I would not wish to risk it: eschewing commercial possibilities in favour of handouts would be a crazy strategy! We are not operating in the communist world of the 1950s!

PS:
And I agree 100% with Stephen's last posting.

[Joe Quick]

In the case of CZ, control over content is important for the following reasons:

(a) we claim to be authoritative [at least for approved articles] by virtue of expert guidance, so the implications for us of poor articles are greater than for WP
(b) WP has made a global impact by virtue of its free access, rapid rise, multiple amateur contributors, rapid dissemination across multiple websites. CZ cannot even begin to rival this, nor should we try. Our approach is one of quality control and free access for the end-user: this does not imply free duplication of material across multiple websites, although it does not preclude it either
(c) If we allow non-commercial duplication of material, it is somehow less costly in terms of reputation than if poor material is located on commercial sites. This has always been WP's defence, that it is non-commercial. What do you expect from a free crap site? etc etc

I agree with these points, but I don't understand how (a) and (b) are affected by a non-commercial license any differently than by a commercial allowable license.  And (c) sounds almost like an argument for a commercial allowable license, although I agree that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.  I just don't think that a non-commercial license would actually afford us any more control than a commercial allowable one would.

With regard to financial security, Steve makes a couple of good points although he paints his picture in black and white when there are many shades of gray in between.  One sentence is especially illuminating:

Who wants just to survive??

Web 2.0 thinks that we should "just survive."  I'd rather thrive, but I want to be sure that we aren't making a decision that is going to hinder that goal.  If we have lots of money but few authors, we aren't thriving.  If we have lots of money and authors but few readers, we aren't thriving.

As I said earlier, I haven't made up my mind, so I'm playing devil's advocate to see if I can get someone to convince me on one side or the other.  Everyone's ideas are becoming more solid, it seems, so I'm happy. 

[Per Lind]

Sorry, Joe: these are not personal criticisms. I think the real problem is that people think CZ should be like WP with small changes, and have not grasped that the underlying principles of CZ are different.

Martin, just for the uninitiated, can you distil the value proposition of CZ so everyone understands the difference between WI and CZ?

Also Just not to take ourselves too seriously, have a look at this from our esteemed "rules and regulations" page:

4. #  We don't use zillions of acronyms. The Chief Constable has made this a bannable offense. We're not sure whether she's kidding or not. Using a lot of acronyms for every small point of policy creates a sort of in-group that makes the community insular and unintelligible.

Two paragraphs down we find this:

9. Our license for our own work will probably differ. This is still under discussion, but will be either the GFDL, CC-by-sa, or CC-by-nc-sa.

Can the Chief Constable please have a look at this? 

Have a look at how seriously Jimbo took himself in Bangkok recently: www.bangkokpost.com/211107_Database/21Nov2007_data21.php

Good points on how we solve this conundrum and good discussion so far!

[Stephen Ewen]

Web 2.0 thinks that we should "just survive."

We're talking about the same crowd who thinks identity and expertise aren't really relative, right?

[Joe Quick]

Web 2.0 thinks that we should "just survive."

We're talking about the same crowd who thinks identity and expertise aren't really relative, right?

Or at least not important.  But we're actually talking about a lot more people than that too.  The general public has some pretty weird ideas about how a non-profit is supposed to work, particularly for non-profits that exist primarily online and whose operational costs aren't immediately obvious.

[tkjazzer]

I'm one author who writes for the world, the more readers the better. If Yahoo!, CBS, etc spread CZ to the world that's terrific.

...

If we block commercial users we will cut off a large potential audience, to the benefit of no one.

By the way, I'm making very heavy use of free services like google search, amazon.com and books.google to write these articles, not to mention lots of books and articles and textbases I access from universities that live on tax dollars from corporations and grants from them.  So reciprocity seems called for.

amen.  I'm pro commercial license for many of the same reasons - but then I go as far to say GFDL is the way to go since we'll only have 1 license and fewer headaches than having 2.

[tkjazzer]

I guess the question boils down to: what type of license will promote the widest use?

There is also a vision issue here: I'm not a lawyer and yet I feel that I'm contributing (probably smally) to the decision-making.  That's a different world. 

And, to paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government ....

Amen - widest use equals gfdl, right?

[Derek Harkness]

Still at work on the paper.

I just wanted to put in here that if I seemed to be advocating for any position, above, it was due to a desire to move the dialectic forward in an interesting direction.  In fact, I still haven't made up my mind.  It's embarrassing.  But I make a practice of not making up my mind until I really have to, and all the data is in.  I am grateful to have so many intelligent people thinking about this.  I'm also grateful that you are open to debating it on a philosophical level, as many (most) are.

Anyway, carry on if you like...I'll be reading.

Please remember that indecision is still a decision. Your reluctance to choose a licence means you have not licensed the material. While we debate how wide the door should be opened, someone has sneaked in, closed the door, locked bolted and bricked up the entrance. There is nobody arguing that the content should be completely closed to any other distribution. So open the door a little bit. We can always reword the licence later to make it more open but the current status of a closed content must be changed.