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Subject: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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  • From: David Wiley <david AT wiley.ed.usu.edu>
  • To: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons <cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [cc-education] About Process
  • Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 13:28:48 -0600

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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