A fascinating license question

[Joe Quick]

I agree with this:

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. Let's them rake in vast profits (vast??? -- I suppose a little $ from ads to a large audience--there's no $ for them if the audience is mall). If we reach that state we can get all the money we want from grants from foundations.

But I have the impression that an awful lot of people (maybe even the majority of contributors) think more like this:

Short answer:  No!

Dunno why, exactly, I have that impression - just a gut feeling, I guess. But I thought more along those lines in the first 6 months or so that I was working on the wiki.  As some point, I took a good look at my own goals and realized that I really just want to make sure that other people have access to good information about the topics that I'm passionate about.  I don't want people to have to pay for that information either, but if a middle man finds a way to make money, I guess I'm okay with that.

[Chris Day]

I agree with this:

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. Let's them rake in vast profits (vast??? -- I suppose a little $ from ads to a large audience--there's no $ for them if the audience is mall). If we reach that state we can get all the money we want from grants from foundations.

But I have the impression that an awful lot of people (maybe even the majority of contributors) think more like this:

Short answer:  No!

Dunno why, exactly, I have that impression - just a gut feeling, I guess. But I thought more along those lines in the first 6 months or so that I was working on the wiki.  As some point, I took a good look at my own goals and realized that I really just want to make sure that other people have access to good information about the topics that I'm passionate about.  I don't want people to have to pay for that information either, but if a middle man finds a way to make money, I guess I'm okay with that.

I'm with Richard and Joe here.

[RJensen]

Suppose some big company like Yahoo! or Google, which has invested billions in hardware and software, picks up CZ. Suppose they bring CZ to 100 million actual users (people who click on one or more CZ entries).  Their business plan is advertising, and if they get one penny per viewer-click in profit (after their costs), that is a million dollars profit to them. That is their incentive. What do CZ authors get? 100 million readers.

[Stephen Ewen]

But now imagine the very same thing of 100 million readers through Google or Yahoo! but with with $200,000 of that $1-million per year going to the Citizendium Foundation to pay for two full-time developers, and new server banks plus several Community Managers for non-English Citizendium projects.

Also imagine some startup who wants to commercially reuse CZ content.  So we give them that license for free for years 1-3, then get 5% of their revenue in years 4-5, and 10% thereafter totaling to $2-million per year by then.  The commercial user is happy, is increasing total readership, and with the licensing revenue generated in association with the commercial user the Foundation plows it back in to pay the salary of Editor-in-Chiefs for several nicely developing non-English projects, as well as to distribute 200,000 DVD copies of Citizendium at $3 each (our cost) to rural high schools in India and Nepal with an accompanying license to make a copy for each student, and so on.

In short, you get the same exposure but the benefits are actually shared. 

Meanwhile, we are still garnering all the same revenue from all the same grants and are freer to do all sorts of great stuff because we are not dependent only upon grants.  Sister projects develop.  Citizendium Kids comes online.  The possibilities are endless.     

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I think Richard is missing the point here. It is one thing to have your work distributed free worldwide, with your name attached. It is quite a different matter for people to take unsourced articles and use them to make money. If you look at what has happened with WP, there is a plethora of websites that have without attribution taken the content of WP -- even in its entirety -- and presented the material as their own.

I agree with Stephen Ewen on the licensing arrangements. There has to be some control over future commercial usage. Just to give you an example from my Mediterranean Migration Observatory: one bibliographic publication that we made, which unusually asserts our copyright, has been stolen by Greek and foreign publishing houses and presented as their own comprehensive bibliography. Some of them even removed the copyright notice and authorship located on the foot of each page.

Do I need to tell you more?

[Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér]

Administering license fees will add a lot of complexity to the project.
I take it very seriously when I say that I support freely shared knowledge. What I have contributed, I have done in order to strengthen the knowledge base available in the world. I think adding -noncommercial or dual-licensing with the purpose of getting license fees is contrary to this project.

[Alexander Wiebel]

Hi,
I support a free license with attribution.

Alex

[Versuri]

CZ users would be working for free to help big corporations make lots of money! It would be terrible. While some people would be working for free, others would be planning how to make money on the back of volunteers.
A noncommercial license would attract to CZ everyone who likes knowledge while a commercial license would attract only people who are fans of free content.
I believe that CZ will have much more users (including experts) in the future if the license chosen be cc-by-nc-sa.

Do you favor a license that allows CBS, Fox, the New York Times, English tabloids, Chinese propaganda sheets, Yahoo!, Google, and all sorts of giant new media companies to come, to use our content?  Without compensation? 

NO

[Jitse Niesen]

I think Richard is missing the point here. It is one thing to have your work distributed free worldwide, with your name attached. It is quite a different matter for people to take unsourced articles and use them to make money. If you look at what has happened with WP, there is a plethora of websites that have without attribution taken the content of WP -- even in its entirety -- and presented the material as their own.

I'm not sure why that is relevant. People are not allowed to take unsourced articles from Wikipedia. Of course it happens, and apparently Wikipedia does not pursue the matter vigorously, but this has nothing to do with the licence. All options considered require attribution (the only exception that is sometimes mentioned is public domain, but I don't see any possibility we will go for that).

PS (added later): my answer to Larry's question is "yes".

[Larry Sanger]

Again, very few people are actually coming out and addressing the question.  Most of the pro-commercial-use-OK side are saying, "Yes, I support freedom!"  That's a nice soundbite.

But I'd like you to own up to the implications of what you're saying.  A few, like Richard Jensen and Jitse Niesen, have been clear on this point, but several others haven't.

So, you are comfortable with allowing media giants to use vast quantities of CZ, with no compensation to CZ--when, under a different licensing scheme, they might have to compensate us huge amounts?  Bear in mind, under the fantasy scenario we're discussing, CZ has hundreds of thousands of approved articles, and millions of articles total, most of them of wonderfully high quality.  This is enormously valuable content and the labor put into it would have been enormously valuable, as well.  The motivation for media companies to use this material, licensed or not, would be very great.

I'd also like to see some actual reasoning behind your stance on this specific point, too.  It's one thing to say, "I stand on principle!!!"  Big deal.  Anybody can say they stand on principle; it doesn't convince anyone else who thinks matters are more complicated.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I think Richard is missing the point here. It is one thing to have your work distributed free worldwide, with your name attached. It is quite a different matter for people to take unsourced articles and use them to make money. If you look at what has happened with WP, there is a plethora of websites that have without attribution taken the content of WP -- even in its entirety -- and presented the material as their own.

I'm not sure why that is relevant. People are not allowed to take unsourced articles from Wikipedia. Of course it happens, and apparently Wikipedia does not pursue the matter vigorously, but this has nothing to do with the licence. All options considered require attribution (the only exception that is sometimes mentioned is public domain, but I don't see any possibility we will go for that).

PS (added later): my answer to Larry's question is "yes".

The reason it is relevant is that we have a case study of how something works in practice: WP gets nothing out of it, therefore there is no money to pay for salaries and other costs and they have to go begging for it. I refer you back to Stephen Ewen's post.

Of course, nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a money-spinning project.

[Larry Sanger]

Of course, nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a money-spinning project.

Er, I might suggest that.  But nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a for-profit project.  It absolutely never will.

Actually, there's a typically modern, bizarre sort of reversal going on here.  For some, it seems, it's outrageous to contemplate that the people who do the work might actually get compensated (as part of a non-profit community project), but it's "Freedom!" if a company, who had nothing to do with the work, makes a profit.

I don't mean to imply that I favor a non-commercial license.  It's just that this particular sort of argument, in favor of a commercial-use-OK license, strikes me as bizarre.

[Larry Sanger]

Suppose some big company like Yahoo! or Google, which has invested billions in hardware and software, picks up CZ. Suppose they bring CZ to 100 million actual users (people who click on one or more CZ entries).  Their business plan is advertising, and if they get one penny per viewer-click in profit (after their costs), that is a million dollars profit to them. That is their incentive. What do CZ authors get? 100 million readers.

This is a powerful argument, I think (unlike arguments that it's a matter of the definition of "freedom").  To elaborate a little more, the idea is that, if media giants see fit to use CZ content, that entails that CZ content will be far more widely dispersed.  Wide distribution is, after all, a key aspect of our goal.  It's hard to disagree with this bare point.

Another notion Richard is advancing, that needs to be stated explicitly, is that it doesn't matter if a company profits on the backs of volunteers.  Why not?  In the spirit of volunteerism and the tradition of open source--goes the argument, which I personally think is weak--one does not expect payment, of course.  The reason that the latter argument is weak is that, in most volunteer operations, and most open source projects, the economics of the beast are such that they couldn't earn much money.  Being open to working without compensation, in these cases, merely makes a virtue of necessity.

I think that any scrupulously honest assessment of the dialectical situation will admit two points: (1) broad distribution by for-profit concerns would be, taken in itself, a good thing; (2) if we were permitting for-profit concerns to, indeed, make a profit, when the producers themselves receive no compensation, that would be morally problematic at the very least, which would require considerable discussion to defuse.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Of course, nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a money-spinning project.

Er, I might suggest that.  But nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a for-profit project.  It absolutely never will.

Actually, there's a typically modern, bizarre sort of reversal going on here.  For some, it seems, it's outrageous to contemplate that the people who do the work might actually get compensated (as part of a non-profit community project), but it's "Freedom!" if a company, who had nothing to do with the work, makes a profit.

I don't mean to imply that I favor a non-commercial license.  It's just that this particular sort of argument, in favor of a commercial-use-OK license, strikes me as bizarre.

By money-spinning, I mean "for-profit" (sorry about the vague language). I also find these views difficult to comprehend, other than to suggest that perhaps they come from people who haven't had to look too hard for money. As such, they are somewhat "ideal-world" type views...

[Derek Harkness]

Of course, nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a money-spinning project.

Er, I might suggest that.  But nobody is suggesting that CZ should turn into a for-profit project.  It absolutely never will.

Actually, there's a typically modern, bizarre sort of reversal going on here.  For some, it seems, it's outrageous to contemplate that the people who do the work might actually get compensated (as part of a non-profit community project), but it's "Freedom!" if a company, who had nothing to do with the work, makes a profit.

I don't mean to imply that I favor a non-commercial license.  It's just that this particular sort of argument, in favor of a commercial-use-OK license, strikes me as bizarre.

It's strange, form my view, from my desk in P.R.China, that the word "Profit" has become a rude word in America.

Freedom is important here. Free content but more importantly, freely distributed content, ensures that the knowledge gets to those who need it most and have least. When you place restrictions on the freedom, this is where you create the opportunity for profiteering. Think of the big media barons you know so well. They make there money by restricting the availability of their content. If every Hollywood movie was released on a CC or GDFL or similar licence, would the film industry be so profitable? No it would not. Hence by making our content free we reduce or maybe eliminate the ability of anyone to profit form our efforts.

In short, if we go for freedom, then we reduce the potential for some media giant to gain form our content. If we restrict our licence then we almost certainly ensure that someone will gain profit. While CZ might gain from that relationship, it's not going to filter down to the individual authors and editors.