Two main license decisions

[Larry Sanger]

I'm currently inclined to think that we have two main decisions:

(1) (a) CC-by-sa or (b) CC-by-nc.

(2) (a) Dual license all CZ articles with both GFDL and the CC license or (b) license Wikipedia-sourced articles with the GFDL and license all others with the CC license.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

The only decision which allows us any Wikipedia content is (2b).  That's a critical factor.

[Larry Sanger]

Zach, proceed to your argument, or point to an argument you made elsewhere.  I'm completely unimpressed by bald assertions.

Notice, there are two decisions--(1) and (2)--that are probably independent.

[Stephen Ewen]

Given a licensing choice over some declaration of user rights as you discussed at http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,555.msg4873.html#msg4873, I favor CC-by-nc for all CZ original work.

I also favor, if possible, the ability to use WP-based material without re-releasing it under the GFDL, i.e., re-releasing it under CC-by-nc.  We should not underestimate the potential ills resulting from WP's ability to take CZ content. 

I am of course not a lawyer, but it does seem re-releasing  GFDL under CC-by-nc might require a day in court at some point.  But that may be okay.  We don't really know what the GFDL means until such a time, nor the interoperability between the GFDL and any CC licenses.  A "day in court" could be a considerable societal good.

In what follows, I offer my thoughts based upon my reading of materials on the subject and some life experiences - again, I am of course not a lawyer. So, to summarize further my reasons for preferring CC-by-nc:

The psychological effect. Although I have no data to back up this assertion, I think it is clearly intuitive: for every expert willing to donate excellent articles for commercial purposes, two or probably many more are willing to donate them for strictly non-profit purposes. Related to this is

"Free" vs. "For non-profit educational purposes" - conceptually and grants. "For non-profit educational purposes" is koine while "free" is jargon. It is much easier to approach an eminent expert to donate his or her time for a few articles  strictly "for non-profit educational purposes".  Introduce "free" and one frequently introduces a can of worms requiring the hearer to be indoctrinated, with far from certain results even at that. More often than not, a polite "no thank you e-mail" will be on it way. On the same token, certain grant funding may only be acquired "for non-profit educational purposes". This is concrete among presently known entities, and it is foregone at the expense of "free" usage by unknown future entities, i.e., a for-profit allowable license means we give up the ability to apply for certain currently available grants in favor of someone's future theoretical ability to use CZ commercially.  Both conceptually and for grants, these are potentially serious and very poor trade-offs.

"Free" requires a trade-off with overall encyclopedia "quality" by reason of more restrictive usage of images. There seems two issues here:

1) More restrictive usage of fair use images - A plain reading of the four prongs in U.S. fair use law seems to allow greater latitude for fair use when "the purpose and character of the use" "is for nonprofit educational purposes" over and against "whether such use is of commercial nature". I imagine this is similar internationally. While it could be argued that CZ does not need, for example, a photo of Ted Koppel released in his ABC promotional packet (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Koppelpress.jpg ), anything less degrades overall quality. Now multiply that to tens of thousands of articles.

2) Restriction on images under terms that specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission only for Citizendium - this goes back to "'Free' vs. 'For non-profit educational purposes' - conceptually".  The more restrictions we allow, the easier it is to obtain quality images.  On the other hand, if one asks for an image (and to translate "free") "that anyone anywhere can use for any for-profit purpose" - expect the "no-thank you" letter much more often than not. This is regarding more than just private entities. I understand that vast banks of historical images held by the Australian government cannot be used in WP. Why?  They are "for non-profit educational purposes" only.

"Free" is an idealistic barrier in the real world of building a quality encyclopedia.  My overall impression of the whole "free" debate is that it is primarily heralded by a minority of often demagogic persons with roots in the "Free" vs. Windows debate. They are bent on changing the world to operate by their preferred model. It is simply unrealistic - and very far from certain, besides - to wait around for the vast majority of the world to change to that model while in the meantime expecting to build a quality encyclopedia in a world that vastly does not operate that way.  WP's "eventualism" may be willing to wait 150 years for the world to change (it still probably will not); they may be willing to create a WP "paparazzi of editors" willing to to take "free" images (often incognito) that still remain problematic.  Yet CZ should not.  The least CZ can do is go CC-by-nc.  In that way, the quality components otherwise unavailable to us - people, materials, and monies - become much more within our reach.  In sum, the trade-offs we must make by allowing commercial usage are simply far too costly, in my view.

For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Kat_Walsh%27s_statement

[Zachary Pruckowski]

Zach, proceed to your argument, or point to an argument you made elsewhere.  I'm completely unimpressed by bald assertions.

Notice, there are two decisions--(1) and (2)--that are probably independent.

I'm only addressing (2).  I could go with either for (1).

Wikipedia is under the GFDL.  There have been talks of trying to arrange for CC-by-SA/NC compatibility with the GFDL, but that's never gotten off the ground.  Therefore, any material drawn straight from WP needs to be under the GFDL and the GFDL only for the foreseeable future.  Whether we like it or not, WP articles are at least a decent starting point for articles (after all, we were a complete fork originally), and having compatibility with WP will be a great boon to the project's growth.  Noone will like redoing all their hard work.

There may come a time when a court case or FSF-CCF negotiations will render CC-by-SA/NC and GFDL compatible.  Until that happens, we need to proceed as if it won't. 

If we want to be the test case, that's an option, but an expensive one for a brand-new foundation with enough other stuff on its plate.  The ensuing slug-fest will leave our leadership distracted, our publicity negative, and will make people skeptical about donating money or content if they're not sure we'll win any sort of legal fight.  The FSF has lawyers, and while they're not rich, they're richer than we are, and they and the Open Source community have a lot of clout online that could put a major damper on promotions.

Also, note that with (2b), we can't simply license our content under just the CC license (whichever it is).  We need a way to take that non-WP-sourced article and move it to GFDL if someone wants to add WP content.  Unless you only want to give the WP-sourced option at article creation.

[MikeJohnson]

A few thoughts-

1. The CC-by-sa 3.0 license (the "wiki" license) now includes a compatibility structure (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_3#BY-SA_.E2.80.94_Compatibility_Structure_Introduced). Which means CC-by-sa <=> GFDL compatibility is likely coming. But as Zach said, this isn't something to count on.

2. Citizendium, as the potential copyright holder of our homegrown content, may have certain rights that make mixing CC and GFDL content less painful. AFAIK, we do not have to follow the restrictions we ourselves put on our content. I say potential because we'd need to set it up that way (Wikipedia does not hold the copyright on its content- each individual contributor does).

3. I think a lot of this comes down to how much compatibility we want with Wikipedia. Is there any consensus on that?

[Zachary Pruckowski]

1. The CC-by-sa 3.0 license (the "wiki" license) now includes a compatibility structure (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_3#BY-SA_.E2.80.94_Compatibility_Structure_Introduced). Which means CC-by-sa <=> GFDL compatibility is likely coming. But as Zach said, this isn't something to count on.

It is my understanding that they can easily make CC-by-SA => GFDL happen easily, but GFDL => CC-by-SA (which is what we want) requires either FSF involvement or a lawsuit.

3. I think a lot of this comes down to how much compatibility we want with Wikipedia. Is there any consensus on that?

Yeah, that's a big question.  I want Wikipedia compatibility because they have a lot of stuff we can build off of.  For a lot of articles, they can be improved on faster than they can be rewritten, and we already have hundreds of WP-sourced articles.  We'd have to toss out all that work if we broke compatibility, which would lose us contributors.

[MikeJohnson]

It is my understanding that they can easily make CC-by-SA => GFDL happen easily, but GFDL => CC-by-SA (which is what we want) requires either FSF involvement or a lawsuit.

That's my understanding as well. I don't think either will actually happen if both can't, though...

3. I think a lot of this comes down to how much compatibility we want with Wikipedia. Is there any consensus on that?

Yeah, that's a big question.  I want Wikipedia compatibility because they have a lot of stuff we can build off of.  For a lot of articles, they can be improved on faster than they can be rewritten, and we already have hundreds of WP-sourced articles.  We'd have to toss out all that work if we broke compatibility, which would lose us contributors.

I think we're in an interesting situation here as we can choose full compatibility (Larry's 2a option, license all our content under the GFDL and dual-license homegrown content under CC as well) or what is essentially one-way compatibility (Larry's 2b option, license WP-sourced content under the GFDL, license homegrown content under CC-by-sa or CC-by-nc).

The second option gives us the ability to source anything we want from Wikipedia, but does not give them the ability to source any fully homegrown content from us. Pragmatically, it sounds great; philosophically, I'd rather not choose this option *because* it would give us a competitive advantage in sourcing content (it doesn't really follow the spirit of free content licenses).

That said, this is basically the only option I see that would give our content the 'non-commercial' status that Stephen Ewen and others would like.

[Luigi Zanasi]

Given a licensing choice over some declaration of user rights as you discussed at http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,555.msg4873.html#msg4873, I favor CC-by-nc for all CZ original work.

I also favor, if possible, the ability to use WP-based material without re-releasing it under the GFDL, i.e., re-releasing it under CC-by-nc.  We should not underestimate the potential ills resulting from WP's ability to take CZ content. 

I am of course not a lawyer, but it does seem re-releasing  GFDL under CC-by-nc might require a day in court at some point.  But that may be okay.  We don't really know what the GFDL means until such a time, nor the interoperability between the GFDL and any CC licenses.  A "day in court" could be a considerable societal good.

While I agree with Stephen in favouring a CC-by-nc license, I think a "day in court" would be a waste of time and of money. Don't forget, it would also mean a "day in court" not only in the US, but also in any number of other countries. Let's just use the GFDL for articles that are derivatives of the Wikipedia ones.

In what follows, I offer my thoughts based upon my reading of materials on the subject and some life experiences - again, I am of course not a lawyer. So, to summarize further my reasons for preferring CC-by-nc:

[a]The psychological effect.[/b] Although I have no data to back up this assertion, I think it is clearly intuitive: for every expert willing to donate excellent articles for commercial purposes, two or probably many more are willing to donate them for strictly non-profit purposes. Related to this is

I will give you some concrete data. Among other things, I do socio-economic impact analyses for a living. As part of that, I prepare "baseline studies" on various small communities in Northern Canada. I am more than willing to contribute those to Citizendium, but only for non-commercial purposes. If someone wants to use them for commercial purposes, e.g. for doing another socio-economic impact study, they should pay me the same way as those who hire me directly.  If someone greatly improves my contributions and I want to use it commercially, well then I should pay them.  An encyclopedia is not free software documentation, where there are all kinds of good reasons to allow commercial re-use of the software, and hence the accompanying documentation.

Note that the  CC-by-nc says "... primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation", so if a teacher or school makes copies of Citizendium articles and charges students a nominal fee to cover reproduction costs, it would be a great stretch to argue that this was done for "primarily commercial advantage".

I have less of a problem with commercial re-use of articles relating to my avocation: woodworking. But I would still prefer to be compensated if they are used commercially, say in creating a book on woodworking (or a woodworking website supported by ads).

For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Kat_Walsh%27s_statement

Where she implies she agrees with: "... 'free' is a higher priority than 'good'.".     I would hope that "good" is the highest priority in Citizendium.

Getting back to decisions about licences, I would like to suggest again:

• For articles written from scratch, we allow either cc-by-sa or cc-by-sa-nc. The decision should be made either by the first author or the workgroup. If someone does not like the chosen license, they can rewrite the article from scratch.
• For Wikipedia-derived articles or articles directly incorporating Wikipedia material, GFDL to avoid legal hassles
• For media such as photographs, we also allow cc-by-sa-nc-nd for the excellent reasons Stephen has pointed out.

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

I'm currently inclined to think that we have two main decisions:

(1) (a) CC-by-sa or (b) CC-by-nc.

(2) (a) Dual license all CZ articles with both GFDL and the CC license or (b) license Wikipedia-sourced articles with the GFDL and license all others with the CC license.

I think it makes sense for all new contributions to be dual-licensed as per 2(a), however for safety's sake (for now) Wikipedia-sourced articles should be publicly released only under GFDL.  I agree that it's not completely clear that GFDL and CC-BY-SA are incompatible but there's no sense in risking a lawsuit just for the sake of it.  Better to lobby for explicit compatibility between the two than create a situation that could result in open conflict.

Getting into an open and/or legal conflict would be damaging to our reputation in the community and also potentially disastrous in terms of sapping funds.  It's not worth risking, certainly not at this stage.

From another post,

We might ask people to share their copyright with the Citizendium Foundation, so that it is CF that then licenses entire articles.  The idea that each person "licenses his own edits" and that these are all then collectively jumbled together when someone else reuses a work produces all sorts of conceptual incoherences.  I was never convinced that this made any sense for Wikipedia, and I have similar doubts for CZ.

It's an intriguing idea, especially since it simplifies any legal issues that come up---aside from relicensing, Citizendium would have an automatic right to sue those misusing content, without needing authors to take part.  On the other hand there would have to be a guarantee that Citizendium would not use this in evil ways (e.g. using it to create a strictly proprietary product).

Given a licensing choice over some declaration of user rights as you discussed at http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,555.msg4873.html#msg4873, I favor CC-by-nc for all CZ original work.

I also favor, if possible, the ability to use WP-based material without re-releasing it under the GFDL, i.e., re-releasing it under CC-by-nc.  We should not underestimate the potential ills resulting from WP's ability to take CZ content. 

I am of course not a lawyer, but it does seem re-releasing  GFDL under CC-by-nc might require a day in court at some point.  But that may be okay.  We don't really know what the GFDL means until such a time, nor the interoperability between the GFDL and any CC licenses.  A "day in court" could be a considerable societal good.

I think taking GFDL-released material and releasing it under CC-by-nc would be crazy.  For starters, whereas CC-by-sa compatibility is arguable, CC-by-nc is explicitly incompatible with GFDL's stipulation that a (re)distributor is allowed to charge a fee.

More important than any legal damage would be the damage to reputation.  "We're going to take your content, modify it and lock away the modifications so you can't have access to them" is about the biggest sin in the free content business: it would have not just Wikipedia but the wider community up in arms against us.  It's an abusive and selfish thing to do in any case---feeding off a source without giving back.  If you want to restrict what Wikipedia can do with our content you have to accept the converse that we won't be able to make use of what they put on offer.

The psychological effect. Although I have no data to back up this assertion, I think it is clearly intuitive: for every expert willing to donate excellent articles for commercial purposes, two or probably many more are willing to donate them for strictly non-profit purposes. Related to this is

Submissions to academic journals tend to involve far more concessions on authors' parts: full transfer of copyright and sometimes still at charge to the author.  As for how many people will be willing to donate their time, I don't think that should be an issue.  Plenty of experts contribute to Wikipedia right now.  We shouldn't alter our licensing for the short-term benefit of getting a few more: better to decide what terms we want our contributions to be available on and persuade people to accept that (which, given the success of Wikipedia, should not be too difficult).

The argument about grants is better but I suspect ultimately suffers from the same problem: tying down Citizendium's future fundraising possibilities in return for a short-term boost now.

I think a non-commercial restriction would be bad for a number of reasons, which I'll deal with in a subsequent post.  For now, people can take a look at two earlier topics/posts:
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,555.0.html
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,518.msg4740.html#msg4740

[Stephen Ewen]

Folks, not all days in court need to be adversarial and nasty! Fact is, the FSF also does not know that the GDFL means!  Two parties in a lawsuit can be friendly...and curious together of the outcome. 

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

Folks, not all days in court need to be adversarial and nasty! Fact is, the FSF also does not know that the GDFL means!  Two parties in a lawsuit can be friendly...and curious together of the outcome. 

That is true ... but in the scenario you envisaged, of taking GFDL material and releasing it as BY-NC, it would be adversarial and nasty, especially with your stated aim to prevent Wikipedia taking back from us.

[Nat Krause]

That is true ... but in the scenario you envisaged, of taking GFDL material and releasing it as BY-NC, it would be adversarial and nasty, especially with your stated aim to prevent Wikipedia taking back from us.

To say nothing of just plain unethical. It is certainly not okay with me if someone to takes text I wrote and placed under GFDL, modifies it, and places additional restrictions on it.

[Stephen Ewen]

The argument about grants is better but I suspect ultimately suffers from the same problem: tying down Citizendium's future fundraising possibilities in return for a short-term boost now.

Non-commercial allows large, ongoing, and concrete funding streams to be tapped. It is not a short-term thing at all. Allowing commercial use is a short-term thing, and far from certain, that stands to offer funding streams that a mere pittance in comparison.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

That is true ... but in the scenario you envisaged, of taking GFDL material and releasing it as BY-NC, it would be adversarial and nasty, especially with your stated aim to prevent Wikipedia taking back from us.

To say nothing of just plain unethical. It is certainly not okay with me if someone to takes text I wrote and placed under GFDL, modifies it, and places additional restrictions on it.

Correct.  Any sort of hostile legal move will (even if successful, which I doubt) be time-consuming, expensive, and generate more negative publicity than the project can handle.  We don't want to be the next SCO in the eyes of the online community.