[cc-education] About Process
David Wiley
david at wiley.ed.usu.edu
Fri Aug 22 14:28:48 EDT 2003
Downes, Stephen wrote:
>Not to be snarky, but: you know where I stand, and once I know
>how the decision will be made, I will be in a better position
>to provide input. But if there's no process, if it's simply
>'whatever Dave decides,' and if Dave has already decided against
>my view, then there's little point to contributing.
>
>Process first. Then decisions.
>
>
Stephen (and all),
It's true that I am driving this process. Following ESR's lessons of
open source software:
1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's
personal itch.
I have a "personal itch" to create an educational use license that will
(1) get some publicity and, therefore, use and (2) will actually stand
up in court. Some people may not be interested, and others may just flat
out wish I wouldn't, but I believe I should.
I'm reminded of the experiences involved with the beginning of
OpenContent. When I first discussed the idea of a new open license just
for content, some people were excited and others were opposed. RMS was
vocally opposed (of course) because I'd chosen the open path instead of
the free one. He had other oppositions as well, and as a relative
unknown in the OSS community it was tough to try to launch the project
over one of the community's loudest opposing voices. However, I have
never been sorry that I carried the project on, despite opposition. And
I believe that there are many other who are glad that I carried it on.
I'm a firm believer that two heads are better than one, and more than
two are better than two (assuming they're not part of a formal
committee). As I've lead the effort to develop a cc.edu with support
from cc, I've tried to bring lots of heads into the conversation to make
the license as useful to everyone as possible. I'm particularly excited
to have the help of very competent IP lawyers on the project.
The process which we are carrying out is this: talk, talk, keep talking,
ask questions, hopefully get answers, make suggestions, incorporate
suggestions, talk some more. This process iterates until the suggestions
and criticisms start to stabilize. Once there is little new coming in,
then make a recommendation or proposal, get more discussion, and stop
where you are if the majority of people seem to think the current spot
is a good one. This will translate into a vote once a stable
recommendation is put together (I think the current structure is fairly
close myself, but then again I though the license option approach was a
good idea. I'm still willing to be swayed by people who will engage in
dialog, as Wouter and others have.).
I think you'll see suggestions which have been made have been
incorporated: stand-alone license rather than license option and
separate branding through a differently colored button. However, at the
risk of sounding rude, the suggestion of "this is a bad idea - let's not
do this" isn't going to be incorporated. I don't think you would drop
your work on fair compensation for RLO creation in distributed learning
object repositories if I suggested that it would harm the community by
encouraging people to release pay-for-view content. It's an itch you
have, you think its useful, and you're probably going to continue trying
to scratch it. And that's just fine.
Finally, I don't actually know where you stand on the cc.edu, other than
that you would like the process to stop before it reaches a conclusion
because you believe it's bad for the community. However, since the new
draft was posted on this listserv on June 19 you have yet to comment
(actually, you did comment after its posting but indicated that the only
draft you knew of was the one posted on the blog in March). I respect
you as a thinker and would like to hear your opinions on the language
and intent of the current license draft. However, if the entire
undertaking is wrongheaded to you, that's fine as well, and there's no
need for you to continue spending cycles on it.
Anywho, I hope that people will poke holes in this morning's proposal.
If nothing happens for a week or so, we'll call for a vote on the proposal.
D
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