Hello. Welcome to the Licencing Discusion about the Oxford Guide. For reference, other Licencing Discussions have been recorded:
http://openguides.org/mail/openguides-dev/2003-December/000163.html http://openguides.org/mail/openguides-london/2003-December/000179.html http://london.openguides.org/?Licensing_Policy http://www.nottinghamguide.org.uk/?Licensing_Policy
This was supposed to be a completely thought through mail but I'll never send it if I try and work through all the arguments in my head first...
The long and short of it is that we can't carry on with no statement of
a) Copyright holders [1] b) a licence
if the site is going to run without hiccoughs for a long time to come (which I hope, of course, that it will).
To begin with, copyright: This is slightly tricky to apply in retrospect, for obvious reaons. Certainly people have occasionally put work that is clearly copyrighted to others into the Guide; I've sometimes left this content there until the situation can be discussed properly. Where content is original to the contributor, the same issue applies. We can't fully control and licence the work sensibly with such a scattered set of copyright holders (or at least we could, but it would likely cause problems in the future). Therefore it is my preference to assign the copyright of all content contributed to the guide to a single entity. The problem with that of course is what entity...
Licensing:
We want to allow the best use of our work, focussing on the non-commercial aspects, but do we want to rule out commerical redistribution entirely? What about distributing by charging only at cost? It would be really nice if at some point in the future the guide could be turned into a paper booklet that could be distributed. London and Nottingham both use this:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
Any objections to using it (or the updated version - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)?
Let the discussion flow from here...
Dominic.
[1] Actually I'm not that sure about this bit, because it means we can't include other suitably-licensed work in the guide at all. Nottingham have the take-all-ownership line, London don't.
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
future). Therefore it is my preference to assign the copyright of all content contributed to the guide to a single entity. The problem with that of course is what entity...
I don't think this is a good idea. It prevents (for example) contributing the same content to two different guides with an identical scheme. It also prevents reuse of material from other guides.
London and Nottingham both use this:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
Any objections to using it (or the updated version - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)?
I'm worried by the "Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one." bit. Even the GPL allows distribution under compatible licences. This licence means you can't merge content from OxfordGuide with content from London and Nottingham guides, since presumably 1.0 is not identical to 2.0. In general being compatible with the broadest possible spectrum of licences (consistent with the restrictions you actually do want) would seem to be a good thing.
I think you need to deal with attribution appropriately. My suggestion for doing this would be to include an Attribution section in each page that people can add themselves to if they wish when making a change.
Ganesh
On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 01:55:13PM +0100, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
I don't think this is a good idea. It prevents (for example) contributing the same content to two different guides with an identical scheme. It also prevents reuse of material from other guides.
Agreed.
I'm worried by the "Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one." bit. Even the GPL allows distribution under compatible licences. This licence means you can't merge content from OxfordGuide with content from London and Nottingham guides, since presumably 1.0 is not identical to 2.0. In general being compatible with the broadest possible spectrum of licences (consistent with the restrictions you actually do want) would seem to be a good thing.
Not quite. From http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216:
| Version 2.0 licenses that feature the Share Alike requirement now | clarify that derivatives may be re-published under one of three types of | licenses: (1) the exact same license as the original work; (2) a later | version of the same license as the original work; (3) an iCommons | license that contains the same license elements as the original work | (e.g. BY-SA-NC, as defined in Section 1 of each license). The version | 1.0 licenses required that derivative be published under the exact same | license only. Our tweak means much better compatibility across future | jurisdiction-specific licenses and, going forward, across versions. Less | forking, more fun.
True, this still doesn't allow transfer of content from a CC 1 -> CC 2 work, but this can be fixed by updating the CC 1 work to use the CC 2 licence, which should be uncontroversial in most cases.
Can you clarify by example your comment about the GPL? I can't see from a quick flick through where it allows derivative works to be distributed under a "compatible" licence? (what is a compatible licence, anyway?)
Section 2.b of the GPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html certainly seems unequivocable:
| b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in | whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part | thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties | under the terms of this License.
I think you need to deal with attribution appropriately. My suggestion for doing this would be to include an Attribution section in each page that people can add themselves to if they wish when making a change.
Probably best implemented as a checkbox in the edit form: "I wish to be attributed for the input I have made into this article" or somesuch. I'll raise this issue on the dev list.
Thanks for your input.
Cheers,
Dominic.
On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 12:36:43AM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
In hindsight, much of this licence was a mistake; I've just updated it somewhat, to be closer (read: almost identical) to what London have.
[1] Actually I'm not that sure about this bit, because it means we can't include other suitably-licensed work in the guide at all. Nottingham have the take-all-ownership line, London don't.
And what a fool I was!
(Oh, and I've moved to v2.0 of the CC licence, too)
James.
On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 12:36:43AM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
Hello. Welcome to the Licencing Discusion about the Oxford Guide. For reference, other Licencing Discussions have been recorded:
Thanks for the comments that people have made on this list and IRC. I've decided to put the contents of the Oxford Guide, whereever possible, under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike licence version 2.0. This licence is described by the Commons Deed http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, whilst the full licence is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode.
There will be a flag day of 1st August 2004, after which time all content on the Oxford Guide will be assumed to be under this licence. The purpose of the flag day is to give people a chance to verify that the Guide does not contain non-original content whose licence would be violated by this change, and also to give previous contributors a chance to remove their work if they do not agree with it being placed under this licence. Although authors retain copyright on their contributions, they also agree that for the purposes of attribution the author of the material can be considered to be "The Oxford Guide" or "The Open Guide to Oxford". In essence, the Licensing Policy will be very similar to http://london.openguides.org/index.cgi?Licensing_Policy.
This message will be posted on the Oxford Guide web site presently, and warnings will be added to the edit form informing the potential contributor of this policy. From 1st August, a notice will be posted at the bottom of each page linking to this licensing policy, and linking to the text of the Commons Deed.
I hope that, in the spirit in which the wiki was set up, these changes are acceptable to all the contributors, without whom the guide would not exist, but if you have any queries please do respond, either directly to me or on list.
Cheers,
Dominic.
openguides-oxford@lists.openguides.org
-
Dominic Hargreaves -
Ganesh Sittampalam -
James Green