Non-commercial licenses vs open licenses: Difference between revisions

Appropedia allows commercial use

True open content material (that does not use the non-commercial restriction) is in principle compatible with projects such as Appropedia, OLPC content bundles, or Wikipedia.

Appropedia uses a license which allows commercial use. We don't mind if someone makes money out of this content, and under our license, we can't stop anyone from doing so.

In fact, if this information is used for the purpose of sustainable business, or a small entrepreneur in a developing country uses Appropedia content (with attribution), for example printing it out and selling books, booklets or pamphlets, that is a sign of Appropedia's success and the value of the content. It helps to spread the knowledge and positive impact further - which is our ultimate goal.

Appropedia and restricted (non-commercial) content

While we encourage likeminded communities and websites to use an open content license in most cases, without the non-commercial clause, we respect that the creators of content have the right to license the content how they wish.

Thus we've talked about making a new namespace especially for non-commercial-license material. This enables projects or content to gain exposure by being in Appropedia, but the pages will be clearly marked to state that the content is not suitable for inclusion in pages that do not have the non-commercial license.

This is just an idea at this stage - discuss at Non-commercial content for Appropedia? on the Appropedia Forum.

Problems with non-commercial licenses

There are major problems with non-commercial (NC) licenses:

• The two main open content licenses (GFDL and CC) are not compatible, so (for example) CC content cannot be used on wikis using GFDL, including Appropedia and Creative Commons. There has recently (November 2007?) been a breakthrough and it is hoped that this problem will soon be overcome. In the mean time, multi-licensing is a way of keeping content as open as possible.
• Much content online which is under a relatively open license has a non-commercial clause, specifically the CC-by-nc (or CC-by-nc-sa?) license. This is not "open content" in the same sense (the term might be a bit vague, but some would reject calling it "open content" at all). Many international bodies such as the FAO have their own statments to the same effect - you can use it for non-commercial use only. Any content with this kind of clause cannot be used in a publication or website operating on the more open license types that don't have the clause. For example, FAO content cannot be used on Appropedia (apart from the standard fair use^W provisions, small quotes etc).
• If a micro-entrepreneur wants to print information out and sell it as books or booklets, this is spreading the information. In Appropedia's case, and for many other projects such as Wikipedia, we want to spread the information as far as possible. Any restriction will mean, in most cases, that the information simply won't be used.

Secondary concerns include:

• The exact definition of non-commercial is not intuitive. What about a personal blog with ads? What about a business that distributes an information leaflet at cost, as a service to the public? What about use by a private educational institution? Currently not even clearly defined in (for example) the Creative Commons non-commercial licenses, though they are working on it (see CC:DiscussionDraftNonCommercial Guidelines)

Concerns with licenses allowing commercial use

A Virgin mobile advertising campaign used people's personal photos, licensed under a CC license, from Flickr, and caused a storm of controversy. This highlights one potential problem with allowing commercial use: People may use the content (including images) in ways you don't want. This may not matter if it's a photo of a sand filter, but it probably does matter if it's a photograph of a family member, friend, or publicity shy person, particularly "cute," amusing or embarrassing shots. Thus it is recommended that sensitive material (personal photos, photographs of other people, and especially photographs of children) be considered carefully before choosing a license.

External links

• Does the Noncommercial Creative Commons license make sense? (CNet blog post, November 27, 2007). "Especially in today's world of interlocking personal and professional lives, defining where "noncommercial use" begins and ends can get extraordinarily tricky."