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cc-education - Re: [cc-education] proliferation, balkanization

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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: Re: [cc-education] proliferation, balkanization
  • Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:44:39 -0600

Ben,

Thanks for your messages last night. If had been anyone else I would have thought it was a denial of service attack on the list. =)

Ben Crowell wrote:

I've had some physics textbooks (www.lightandmatter.com) under the GFDL and
OPL licenses
for a while now, and have just recently changed them all over to a CC
license. As I look
at this proposal, naturally I start thinking in terms of my own books. I have
a negative
reaction to the proposal for an educational CC license for several reasons,
but maybe
my reasons wouldn't apply to other people.

We definitely want to hear what you have to say! Onward...

--proliferation of licenses--
One thing that worries me is the proliferation of licenses. We already have
GFDL, two
versions of OPL, and 8 versions of CC, for a total 11 licenses. Do we really
need to make
it 12? The proliferation of copyleft licenses has already caused vast
problems in the
world of software. For instance, Mozilla does not yet have full support for
MathML and
SVG (support is incomplete and buggy, and is not included in the default
builds), and one
of the main reasons is incompatibilities between licenses. The world of
copylfted
software is a couple of orders magnitude bigger than the world of copylefted
books, audio, and the trend seems to be that software is increasingly being
released under
only a relatively small number of licenses: GPL, LGPL, and BSD. I have a hard
time
believing that a much larger number of licenses is appropriate for the much
smaller
world of non-software.

I think we should also keep in mind that only a vanishingly small percentage
of the
population has ever even heard of the concept of open content, copylefted
books, etc.
If they happen to hear about the idea, and are interested, why confuse them
with a
patchwork of incompatible licenses?

There's a partial list of OSI approved licenses at http://opensource.org/licenses/ and the list is really large. And though you're right in the assertion that most software is licensed under the big 3, I believe the world is a better place because of Mozilla's openness and other projects that are largely open but for whatever reason couldn't use one of the big 3. There is some confusion, yes, but if confusion buy me mozilla and other projects that wouldn't happen otherwise, then I'm for some confusion.

I hope that no new material is being licensed under the OPLs; opencontent.org discourages that now. The GFDL is only (or mainly) used for documentation (as it says in the title). So for the vast majority of content that has yet to be licensed, it seems that the cc licenses (of which there are 11, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/) are the only real choices.

--balkanization of free information--
The whole idea of free information is to break down barriers, but by creating
a new
license restricted to education, we erect new ones. The excitement of free
information
lies in serendipity -- Linus Torvalds never dreamed that his toy operating
system would
be used for all the things it's being used for now. Do we want to end up with
some
free textbooks that can only be used in a school, not in corporate training?
Some free
music that can only be played in nightclubs, not concert halls? Some free
photos that
can be incorporated into collages, but not used as props in theater sets?
Would the
word "free" even be proper to apply to these works?

Free would not, but "free for educational use" would. If you've ever been 10 weeks into teaching 8th grade math in an inner city school in New York without textbooks because the school system can't afford them, you would thank the Maker for free materials, whether they were free to anyone other than you or not. (My best friend just lived this experience not long ago.)

--why?--
My biggest question is why this is really necessary. What are the examples of
books,
songs, paintings, and poems whose authors really need to restrict their use to
educational settings? Speaking only for myself, restrictive, non-free licenses
don't excite my imagination the way real free information does.

That's good! I hope you never lose that vision. As I've said before,

(1) The best thing for increasing access to educational opportunity (AtEO) would be having people dedicate their materials to the public domain. However, the vast majority will not, so

(2) The next best thing for AtEO is having people license their works with a standard CC license. However, there are still very many people who will not, so

(3) The next best thing for AtEO is having people license their works with cc.edu

The goal of cc.edu is to reach content on that next tier. It doesn't excite me the way public domain materials does, but if this little bit of confusion can get us the mozilla's of educational content, I believe it's worth it.

D





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