[cc-community] New Science Commons protocol and the Open Data Commons legal tools

Gavin Baker gavin at gavinbaker.com
Mon Dec 17 11:29:01 EST 2007


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Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> Gavin Baker wrote:
>> Can someone explain specifically the relationship of CC Zero with the
>> Protocol?
> 
> CC0, or another license that attempts to waive all relevant rights, 
> satisfy the copyright and related legal part of the protocol.
> 
>> I get that CC Zero is meant to be compliant -- will CC Zero be
>> the CC-recommended license for data?
> 
> Presumably.
> 
>> Is CC Zero designed specifically for data?
> 
> No, but informed by data[base] rights issues.
> 
>> Why have the ODC license?
> 
> For one thing, CC0 does not exist yet. Someone has to be a pioneer. The 
> really nice thing is that various efforts converging on the public 
> domain are fully interoperable. :) I imagine that one way to think about 
> the SC protocol is that it ensures this (interoperability) is the reality.

Okay, but to put this in another perspective:

You are Dr. So-and-so, a researcher at Openly Minded University. Someone
tells you that you should apply a license to your datasets to make clear
they are open (maybe you've already been posting them online, or maybe
the other person is trying to convince you to do that too). You say,
"Sure, tell me how." They say, "Well, you have to choose." Stop: fail.

Taking a lesson from the software world: Options are good for those who
want them, but they're not a substitute for good defaults.

(This is all a bit hypothetical, since CC0 doesn't exist, and even ODC
is still a draft. But my point is: Options for the sake of having
options -- especially where the options are functionally equivalent --
can be a waste of CPU [cognitive processing unit] cycles. That doesn't
mean don't have options; it means have a standard recommendation, and
don't tell people about the other options who don't want to hear about
them and want it to Just Work[TM]. IMHO, anyway. Good stuff regardless!)

- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com
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