Appropedia talk:Intellectual property: Difference between revisions

(Moved from Village Pump and Appropedia:Licensing)

I want to add material from another site[1] which is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. Before I copy, though, I'd like to see a clearer licence notice put on Appropedia pages. I notice that Project:Copyrights is currently a redlink.

This may seem anal retentive, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind us using it, but I want to do the right thing by that site's contributors, especially since I'm hoping that they'll come over here to be part of an active wiki. --Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 01:21, 17 July 2006 (PDT)

This does not seem anal rententive. Sorry for the slow, inconclusive response, and thank you for putting pressure on this needed component. I have been reticent on this part because I have questions/concerns. The vast majority of the media on appropedia is user created. I do not think that the majority of this content is appropriate for commercial use. What do you think about something like Creative Commons (example license link). As for the text content of appropedia, I am still researching the GNU-FDL. Currently, I am a little put off by some parts, and very excited about other parts, and either way I have benefited much from other GNU works. I think that, for appropedia, encouraging users to submit and assuring free access are paramount. Anybody have any swaying comments or brilliant suggestions? --Lonny 19:05, 25 July 2006 (PDT)

Some quick thoughts...

Re the GNU-FDL:

• It does allow commercial use, but I'm not sure if that's a problem. Commercial use isn't necessarily a bad thing - the sort of commercial use that this material might be put to probably isn't going to be a "bad" kind of commercialism.
• I think the licence does prohibit the material being used with a more restrictive licence (e.g. a book with a conventional copyright applying to material taken from Appropedia), so I would think that's the most important thing.

Re the Creative Commons license:

• It's very simple and elegant. Don't know if it's too simple, though - all that text in the other licenses might be excess verbage, or then again it might actually serve a purpose.
• The example given specifies non-commercial. Using this particular form of CC licence might mean that we're not entitled to incorporate material that's licensed under GNU-FDL (as Creative Commons is a more restrictive licence). We could still use information from elsewhere, but would have to rewrite it... which we'd probably do anyway. I might be wrong about all that, though.

GNU-FDL seems the simplest route to me - I'm happy to use something which has been decided upon by other communities such as Wikipedia. (Though I'm not sure if the community decided on it, or the foundation, or if it's a historical thing from the people who first started it.)

Those are my thoughts - I'm probably not going to think much more deeply than that about these issues (my eyes glaze over when I see pages of licence-related text) and at this point I don't see a major problem with either option.

--Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 02:22, 27 July 2006 (PDT)

Gosh, why wouldn't we (um, hi, I'm Curt) choose the Creative Commons Developing Nations license? Seems like appropriate technology for this wiki.--Curtbeckmann 07:40, 11 September 2006 (PDT)

What an excellent solution (hi Curt). The CCDN license is the best fit that I have seen so far. Do you know if this license allows for material from Appropedia (under the CCDN license) to be used in other wikis? This is something that I think we want. --Lonny 01:53, 12 September 2006 (PDT)

As far as I can tell, other wikis would need to mark any copied content as being under the CCDN license. That seems unlikely, and so it might discourage the dissemination of Appropedia content to other sites. Actually, I had initially interpreted the CCDN as being less restrictive than GNU-FDL, but on further reading I believe it is actually more restrictive. At this point, my preference would be to use whatever license is most often used in other wikis, to simplify the propagation question. I am therefore inclined to go with GNU-FDL. --Curtbeckmann 07:02, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

Can we "pull the trigger" on the GNU-FDL? It occurs to me that I'd like this settled as I start recruiting. Thanks... --Curtbeckmann 09:14, 29 September 2006 (PDT)

I agree on this - I have similar concerns about the CCDN license, though I haven't looked into it to see how it would actually work. Lonny, what do you think? --Singkong2005 ^talk 02:29, 30 September 2006 (PDT)

Thank you all for pushing on this important part of Appropedia. I still have concerns that a license that allows developed-world commercial use will discourage some types of submissions. For instance, some of the non-text content at Electricity_basics. With the GNU-FDL license, if someone used some appropedia-based content commercially, would all of the work it is published with need to be GNU-FDL, or just the content they copied from here? I have a few more questions, but let's settle on this by Tuesday, October 2nd. I would like to talk to a lawyer, but currently I am leaning towards the CCDN. --Lonny 03:29, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

Interesting. I would actually have problems with a license that did not allow developed-world commercial use (which is why I lost some interest in the CCDN license). If someone can find a way to produce these ideas and make a nickel while they're at it, I'm ecstatic. (A lot of appropriate technology could well be useful in the developed world, but won't be adopted if it's only available to DIY types.) Such production could not be proprietary (i.e. patented) under GNU-FDL. I particularly like GNU-FDL because it makes it easy to move information from most existing wikis to Appropedia, and then mature (becoming encyclopedic) content on to Wikipedia. I'm happy with your timeline! Lack of license is more of an impediment than no license. In the absence of a license, I believe that someone can include content from this site into a book, then copyright the book and later claim copyright violation if the content is reproduced! This could probably be fought, but GNU-FDL would explicitly prevent it.

Looking forward to Tuesday! --Curtbeckmann 17:08, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

With trepidation and excitement Appropedia will be adopting the GNU-FDL for our pages. Other licenses may still be looked at for other media content. These changes will be reflected on the pages and Project:Copyrights soon. Thank you Singkong2005 and Curtbeckmann for all of your pressure. --Lonny 13:52, 6 October 2006 (PDT)

Yeah! A little trepidation is okay, I think :-). Now I'll go tidy up the copyright section of the test main page :-) Thanks, Lonny! It actually makes me feel better that you've given it thorough consideration! --Curtbeckmann 13:57, 6 October 2006 (PDT)

Amazingly, Lonny and I actually spoke by phone last night! Wow, what'll they think of next? One upshot of the conversation was that I finally understood Lonny's concerns about the GNU-FDL, which I will attempt to express here. Above he mentions the concern that allowing 1st world commercialization may discourage contributions. I mistook that to mean that potential contributors might be opposed to commercialization in the 1st world. As I now understand his concern, it is that there may be potential contributors who want to reserve their rights to exclusive 1st world commercialization, which is quite different. After thinking about it, I think that Lonny has a point. I've dropped a note to a lawyer friend who may have some insight. We'll see.

Before we hear back from the lawyer, I'll list some other thoughts. Lonny and I spoke briefly about options. Here are some:

1. Support more than one license. A default license, plus another that would be called out page by page.
2. Use a links to refer to content on other sites released under licenses than the Appropedia scheme
3. Create and maintain a separate site for that other content

After sleeping on it, I believe there would be problems with "anyone can edit" coexisting with any form of reserved rights. I would guess that you won't see CCDN licenses on open wikis. Anyone can come in, remove the copyright or change the content, etc. I also think that having a complex copyright scheme will discourage some folks just by confusing them. So I think that the first option (multiple licenses) probably doesn't work. I think the other 2 options are perfectly viable, and consequently I think we should move forward with the GNU-FDL as announced above. Sorry for the shaggy dog story, but wanted to get others "in the know." --Curtbeckmann 07:58, 7 October 2006 (PDT)

The GNU-FDL has finally been accepted and added (see footer). --Lonny 02:47, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

Curt, I see what you are saying about allowing other copyrights for content. But I still see promise in allowing diverse copyrights for media as opposed to text content. There is some precedent for this, and it seems to avoid your concern. --Lonny 02:47, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

Revisit licensing

This conversation started on Lonny's talk page, but I've taken the liberty of moving it where I think it fits better. --Singkong2005 · talk 20:06, 20 November 2006 (PST)

Sigh. But we have new info, since Helge is clearly much more versed; I think the CC license is the way to go, but perhaps it's dual licensing. If you want to re-open this, I'll join you (after this weekend when I'll be vacationing sans Internet) in notifying contributors and modifying copyright pages. Is there an efficient way to identify those contributors? --CurtB 06:41, 3 November 2006 (PST)

I think the CC license (Google just donated $30,000) is the way to go as well. Does CCDN still seem the best choice? As far as the contributors, I have already asked about half if they would mind the change, all approved. If you could contact the information that you, User:Kjpeterson and User:Zenalejandro added, I think that I can take care of the rest. We should also probably move this conversation to Appropedia_talk:Copyrights, and we need get feedback from Chris. --Lonny 11:36, 3 November 2006 (PST)

I think Helge was recommending CC attribution, which is very similar to GFDL except simpler. I think CCDN may have problems with open editing. My thinking is that with CCDN you are protecting something, and it ought to be well-defined, and with open editing that seems a challenge. My thought about that is that there should be a sister site for CCDN content, probably a wiki (sweat the name later) but with some kind of protection; it depends on what protection MediaWiki offers... Could also just be a non-editable site.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. We should start by reading the links that Helge provided (on his talk page) about CC options versus GFDL, plus the dual licensing option. Then perhaps we can speak/write with more intelligence... I guess I could have answered at Talk:copyrights. Oops... --CurtB 12:06, 3 November 2006 (PST)

I forgot to comment on the other users related to the licensing. In both cases, I saw them posting marketing material (which is perfectly fine) that I expect they would love to have copied, with or without attribution, so I don't expect issues there, and of course we can remove the material if necessary. In any case, I will let them know that we will likely be changing soon. I will also let the IRN folks know. --CurtB 19:34, 3 November 2006 (PST)

If there is a need for licensing differentiating (i.e. content with licence A only, other with B only) I think it's not necessary to create a separate site/wiki for that. I believe Appropedia:Copyrights could say "all contents licensed unter A unless stated otherwise", while a prominent note a specific wiki would say "licenced under B, in contrast to the rest of this site" (similar to the dual-licence-badges on wikimedia commons). Regarding open editing and CCDN: Not sure if that is a bad match. Afaik AFH's 'open architecture network' is set to combine the two. Probably is more a social question than a legal one. --Helge 09:49, 4 November 2006 (PST)

The separate site idea was partly about different licensing, partly about having different protection on one site versus another. Again, if you're protecting something, I would not think you would want someone else to be able to edit it.

Another wrinkle in licensing, which we could ignore, is: wikipedia:GNU_Simpler_Free_Documentation_License --CurtB 17:52, 6 November 2006 (PST)

There is one minor issue to be aware of with CC licensing: I sometimes copy templates from Wikipedia, and if we used a different license we'd have to be careful not to infringe on Wikipedia's license when copying in this way. I suspect that it's not a problem where there's just a few lines of code, and as long as we don't just copy multiple paragraphs of documentation without modification. Worth asking a lawyer, perhaps.

Of course the same issue applies with any text. However, thanks to the way we're dealing with demarcation (e.g. with the {{Wikipedia}} template), we don't copy much Wikipedia text to Appropedia, so it shouldn't be a problem. --Singkong2005 · talk 22:09, 6 November 2006 (PST)

Perhaps we can have a two-or-more-pronged approach while using the CC license:

• avoid straight copying of GFDL material where possible
• make a template notice to put on pages that do use the GFDL license (e.g. templates copied from Wikipedia)

I don't quite understand the advantages of dual licenses... if we dual license all contributions by default, will that enable other wikis such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiversity to take material from here? That would be freer and therefore better, in my mind.

btw, any objection to moving this whole conversation to Appropedia talk:Copyrights?--Singkong2005 · talk 18:51, 10 November 2006 (PST) Moved. -- Singkong2005 · talk 20:08, 20 November 2006 (PST)

A further thought: Now that we are (well, Curt is, anyway) porting lots of material from other sources, it's likely that we will often develop encyclopedic material (sentences, paragraphs, articles) which can be transwikied to Wikipedia. I think this is a very positive thing, and I think it's essential that we can do this. I guess this means that we either use GFDL, or some kind of dual license which allows it be to be reused under either the GFDL or CC license (if I've understood dual licenses correctly). --Singkong2005 · talk 20:15, 20 November 2006 (PST)

As long as your CC-licence allows deriative work and commercial use (such as the CC-BY-SA) - which I would recommend, it is to my knowledge one-way compaitble with the GFDL, so contents can be ported to Wikipedia. --Helge 05:29, 21 November 2006 (PST)

More Reading

http://www.intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC

The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License

Reserving the right to place content in the public domain.

Vinay Gupta's thoughts, via email:

Here's an option: can we reserve the right to place articles into the public domain if there is a pressing interest to do so, and otherwise be FDL? Because the .mil and the NGOs can't handle FDL, which is a bloody shame, but how it is. If something on Appropedia suddenly becomes really important, getting it into actual use may mean pushing it into the PD cleanly.

Very interesting. The challenge is, we want to do this and at the same time maintain a license with is consistent with Wikipedia, for example, so we can give them material if it's well enough sourced, and also we can take material from GFDL sites such as Wikipedia when transwikiing is appropriate.

Perhaps the way to do it is to have our version of the copyright agreement include:

• agreement to the material being moved to the public domain in the case of a pressing interest and lack of alternative solutions,
• description of who can make this decision, under what circumstances. Board of directors? Consensus by admins (in the case of a dissenting voice, consensus is defined as at least 80% in favor?)
• an explanation that only content original to Appropedia is subject to this condition, i.e. not Original namespace content from groups like Practical Action (unless they give their own permission), and not substantial quotes from GFDL sources. Now, in theory GFDL sources should be noted (e.g. "this content is taken from Wikipedia") so it should be obvious, as long as we skim through the content to be moved to PD. It would make it a bit of a challenge if we wanted to release a very large number of pages under PD, but I suspect this might be unavoidable. --Chriswaterguy · talk 03:57, 20 March 2007 (PDT)

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