A fascinating license question

[Matt Innis]

While CZ might gain from that relationship, it's not going to filter down to the individual authors and editors.

Agree with this.  I don't know, but lets be sure what we are talking about.  

I assume that the average run of the mill author or editor is not going to see any renumeration for their work, right.  Those are the people that are 'giving' away the information for 'free', regardless of what license we choose or whether we sell it to CBS.  The only people that this affects are those that 'run' the organization; who, I agree, need to be paid for their time.  I suppose indirectly we all gain by having somebody here to keep us on track and maintain the wiki.  However, for the run of the mill author or editor that isn't going to see any money anyway, they are here to share the dream of an 'ideal world' and at least get the information correct that they feel passionate about.  They never expected any financial incentive in the first place.

So the question is; how much money do we need and can we get it anywhere else.  If RJensen is correct and we will have more than enough funding from other sources, then I would think the energy expended by those that do the requesting would be equivocal to the other CBS scenerio where those who would manage the 'accounts receivable' department would have to spend many man hours there as well.

If the money is equal, then the bottom line becomes one of image... information for sale vs information for free.  Both have their pros and cons.  Certainly people respect things that they buy more than those they get for free, but no-body ever faults an organization that gives it away.

Hmm, good question.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

If we use a license that permits commercial reuse--CC-by-sa or GFDL--then every major media company in the world could, and probably would, use CZ content.  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?

I say yes, absolutely.  To elaborate, I'd have to hear your alternative.

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?

If they have to compensate me huge amounts, I'd obviously prefer that.  But if they have to compensate a non-profit organization of which I only have a single vote out of millions, I'd prefer no compensation to take place.

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.

Yes, and that's why I don't trust the organization to do what's right with all that power.  What's to stop CZ from being just as bad as those Chinese propagandists?  You might think you've devised a system of governance that can withstand corruption, but I don't buy it.  The best way to stop corruption is by devolving power, and a license which can be used by anyone, for any purpose, without compensation, is what devolves power the most broadly.

By the way, those Chinese propagandists are generally working for a non-commercial organization (the Chinese government) anyway.

[Larry Sanger]

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

Profit isn't a rude word.  You may be surprised to learn that I am a proponent of free markets and of profit-making.  What I think is at least morally problematic is that anyone profits on the backs of volunteers.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

Profit isn't a rude word.  You may be surprised to learn that I am a proponent of free markets and of profit-making.  What I think is at least morally problematic is that anyone profits on the backs of volunteers.

Now you're the one engaging in sloganeering.  What constitutes profiting "on the backs of volunteers", and why is this morally problematic?  If someone releases their work under the GFDL or CC-BY-SA, they're explicitly granting permission for others to profit off that work.  Why would it be morally problematic to then go ahead and do so?

If your argument is that people won't voluntarily give away their content in this way, that's one thing.  But your scenario explicitly assumes the content is going to be created, which is a good thing, because Wikipedia has already proven that people will voluntarily license their work under the GFDL.

On your blog, you say "The Citizendium Charter, and the constitutional republic it defines, would ensure that the foundation behaves fairly."  I don't buy it.  A "constitutional republic" which strictly controls virtually all the output of the community will not behave fairly.

[Pat_Palmer]

I guess I'm in favor of "free content" with "attribution from commercial usage" only.  I don't really care about education or non-profit usage.

Just exploring here...Let's assume CZ gets so good that a major news organization wants to use CZ content regularly.  Here's a possible scenario:

GIVEN: It seems to me that the content ought always to be freely usable by anyone.
BUT: If used to "make money", as in a news report, CZ could reasonably require attribution.  After all, the public credit can only help CZ, which needs recognition and acception (and money coming from those), and attribution could be regarded a viable form of "compensation" that is not actual money.

Attribution, such as "some information in this report was obtained from The Citizendium", could either be on each news report, or in the credits at the end of the program. 

To avoid having to make such attributions, wealthy organizations might instead donate to Citizendium (unrestricted funds) in return to the ability to use without public attribution.  The amount donated could be based on a reasonably estimate of the volume of usage per year, based on some verifiable criteria such as how many news reports or researchers are allowed "free" usage without attribution.  The funds could be used for infrastructure and management costs, which will definitely rise over time as the project grows.

Thoughts?

[Russell D. Jones]

I like Pat's suggestion.  In my other job, I don't generate knowledge for free.  I get paid for it (by my U) or I expect some (scholarly) community recognition for it.  I think if a business uses CZ knowledge to make money, it owes CZ. I like Pat's suggestion of an option: a business can pay for it or attribute it; either way, CZ benefits. 

[Stephen Ewen]

Pat, all use in everyday news reporting is trivial and fair use.  The issue is more like with the example of the NY Times I gave.

[Larry Sanger]

I like Pat's suggestion.  In my other job, I don't generate knowledge for free.  I get paid for it (by my U) or I expect some (scholarly) community recognition for it.  I think if a business uses CZ knowledge to make money, it owes CZ. I like Pat's suggestion of an option: a business can pay for it or attribute it; either way, CZ benefits. 

On all licenses we are considering, attribution for reproduction of CZ content will be required.  That's a standard (not universal) requirement of these sorts of licenses.  It's the "by" in CC-by-sa.  Therefore, the suggestion we content ourselves either with attribution or with money will is equivalent to advocating against a noncommercial license (since attribution is required).

[Larry Sanger]

Profit isn't a rude word.  You may be surprised to learn that I am a proponent of free markets and of profit-making.  What I think is at least morally problematic is that anyone profits on the backs of volunteers.

Now you're the one engaging in sloganeering.  What constitutes profiting "on the backs of volunteers", and why is this morally problematic?

The reason I say some people "sloganeer" is that they offer the usual slogans and then, when pushed to answer hard questions, don't offer any interesting answers (or any answers at all).  Personally, I can explain in great detail why it is, as I say, at least morally problematic.  This will be in my paper.  This doesn't mean that I think that there actually is something morally wrong with it, though--just that there are some obvious moral questions to raise.

If someone releases their work under the GFDL or CC-BY-SA, they're explicitly granting permission for others to profit off that work.  Why would it be morally problematic to then go ahead and do so?

But this point makes no traction whatsoever if we haven't decided on a license yet.  I will stipulate (with some caveats) that you do give away your exclusive moral right to make a profit, along with a legal one, if you agree to use those licenses.  But if you are trying to decide whether to give away those rights, then the question might arise.  I created this content, and I did so as a volunteer.  That means no one should be getting rich off of it, because if anyone actually gets rich, makes a profit, off of my content, it should be me.  If anyone deserves to make a profit from creating something, it is the creator.  I admit that it may not be as clear as all this (as I'll explain in that paper).  But this is why you find some people in this thread saying that it's not fair at ALL if large corporations are allowed to profit from their volunteer work.  That's not what volunteer work is for, they think.

If your argument is that people won't voluntarily give away their content in this way, that's one thing.  But your scenario explicitly assumes the content is going to be created, which is a good thing, because Wikipedia has already proven that people will voluntarily license their work under the GFDL.

No, that of course would be a straw man.

On your blog, you say "The Citizendium Charter, and the constitutional republic it defines, would ensure that the foundation behaves fairly."  I don't buy it.  A "constitutional republic" which strictly controls virtually all the output of the community will not behave fairly.

I don't follow that at all.  Why do you assume, exactly contrary to our declared intention and policy, that our governance system will "strictly control virtually all the output of the community"?  And why do you assume it will not behave fairly?

[Warren Schudy]

I'd say as long as the license:
* requires attribution that's prominent, not buried in an unreadable 5-point footnote.
* has robust requirements that source of derivative works be redistributed.
Then commercial use is fine with me. Even with a commercial-friendly license, someone can't take half of a CZ article, modify it, and incorporate that into a book without releasing the source for the book. So commercial entities can't incorporate copy-lefted article into their closed "intellectual property", regardless of cc-nc-sa vs. cc-by-sa.

My understanding is cc-nc-sa is not an open-source license by http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php because of #5 and #6.

Even if the license allows commercial use, we could probably guilt-trip major uses of our content into paying us. Imagine if CBS paid us and NYT did not; CBS could then mention this fact whenever they attribute stuff to us.

(I have modified the rest of this article since first posting it.)

I support a commercial-friendly license such as GPL, GFDL, or cc-by-sa. A non-commercial license gives the Citizendium Foundation too much power. I think the CZ foundation should act as if it were licensed the articles by the authors and is therefore bound by the copy-left license. Legally, that would introduce huge complications if we wanted to switch licenses, so legally it's best for the CZ foundation to be the owner. However, I don't think the CZ foundation should make routine use of its ownership by selling more liberal licenses.

Imagine if Citizendium starts selling liberal licenses to companies and uses the the money to hire professional editors and its quality therefore takes off. At first this might sound like a good thing, but there's a huge downside. If Citizendium's governance went crazy, anyone forking Citizendium would be at a severe disadvantage because they would not have access to the same revenue stream.

I think Citizendium's licensing powers should be limited by tradition and/or contract to choosing new open-source licenses, but should not accept offer different licenses to different parties in exchange for money or other considerations.

ws

[Larry Sanger]

Suppose, Warren, that a large, democratically selected, representative body of Citizens were to make decisions about budget and salary rates (as U.S. Congress does).  Are you saying that that body would have too much power?  (Over what or whom?)

[Warren Schudy]

In response to Larry: Yes. Even democratic governments can and do go bad.

[Russell D. Jones]

Thank you Larry and Warren for putting my butt into action.  Upon reflection on this, I think my fundamental concern is that CZ's bills get paid (and the best way to do that is to sell what it makes).  Voluntary donations of cash keep the servers running.  Voluntary donations of time and knowledge expand the content.  (Am I getting this right?)  Personally, I'm not concerned about compensation.  I donate my work to CZ (or WP and the world).  I get that.  I don't expect compensation.  And when I work on WP, I don't even expect attribution.

CZ is banking on creating a reputation of credibility based upon the reputations of its editors and authors and, ultimately over time, creating a historical reputation of accuracy.  That reputation should not be hindered.  It would be a good thing if the Times routinely went to CZ for its information.  Given that encyclopedic knowledge is freely available, how much would a "for-profit" be willing to pay for knowledge, if the only thing CZ has to offer is credibility, especially where the knowledge on CZ isn't that radically different from other sources?  Not much, I'd wager.

So, the success of CZ will come from expanding its reputation and expanding its use.  Expanding use will bring more people who just might consider making a donation to keep the servers running.

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 ....

[Anthony_DiPierro]

If someone releases their work under the GFDL or CC-BY-SA, they're explicitly granting permission for others to profit off that work.  Why would it be morally problematic to then go ahead and do so?

But this point makes no traction whatsoever if we haven't decided on a license yet.

The point was in response to your claim that "profiting off the backs of others" can be morally problematic.  I don't see the moral problem with "profiting off the backs of others" who have explicitly granted permission for you to do so, and there seems to be no suggestion from anyone that we should "profit off the backs of others" who have not granted permission to do so.

I will stipulate (with some caveats) that you do give away your exclusive moral right to make a profit, along with a legal one, if you agree to use those licenses.  But if you are trying to decide whether to give away those rights, then the question might arise.  I created this content, and I did so as a volunteer.  That means no one should be getting rich off of it, because if anyone actually gets rich, makes a profit, off of my content, it should be me.

Well, that's your opinion, and clearly the opinion of some others.  Other people have different opinions.  In fact, I have essentially the opposite opinion.  I will not contribute to Citizendium if it adopts a noncommercial-only license.  In fact, if it adopts such a license I will request that the article I wrote at [[taxation]] (before I knew about this talk of using a noncommercial-only license) be removed as a violation of my copyright.  I will contribute to Citizendium if it adopts either GFDL or CC-BY-SA.

Another problem with this line of reasoning is that we aren't talking about using a non-profit license, we're talking about using a non-commercial license.  And regardless of which license is chosen, people are going to make a profit.  The money that gets paid to Citizendium for licensing fees has to go somewhere, after all.

On your blog, you say "The Citizendium Charter, and the constitutional republic it defines, would ensure that the foundation behaves fairly."  I don't buy it.  A "constitutional republic" which strictly controls virtually all the output of the community will not behave fairly.

I don't follow that at all.  Why do you assume, exactly contrary to our declared intention and policy, that our governance system will "strictly control virtually all the output of the community"?  And why do you assume it will not behave fairly?

The output of the community is its intellectual property.  You want Citizendium to control who can and can't use that intellectual property for profit.  I assume it will not behave fairly because I've never seen such a system behave fairly, and I've seen lots of such systems behave unfairly.  To my mind, collective control of community output should be kept to a bare minimum.  Allowing even democratically elected officials to determine who can and who cannot use content which I have created is unacceptable.

[Larry Sanger]

In response to Larry: Yes. Even democratic governments can and do go bad.

Yes, we knew that already, but it doesn't prove anything.  We can be unfairly managed regardless of license.  You said, "A non-commercial license gives the Citizendium Foundation too much power."  OK, supposing the wielders of power are, essentially, "the people themselves"--so what exactly is the problem again?