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acawiki-general - Re: [acawiki-general] Wikilit question about site license

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  • From: Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com>
  • To: Chitu Okoli <Chitu.Okoli AT concordia.ca>
  • Cc: AcaWiki <acawiki-general AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [acawiki-general] Wikilit question about site license
  • Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:35:40 -0700

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 18:55, Chitu Okoli <Chitu.Okoli AT concordia.ca> wrote:
> We're not planning to set up a permanent, dynamic website; we just want to
> post our data, get communal feedback to clean it up, and then eventually
> export the data to relevant long-term sites like AcaWiki, Brede Wiki and
> WikiPapers.

Sounds excellent.

> We are wondering how to license our site. We are naturally inclined to
> CC-BY-SA, like Wikipedia (and also Brede Wiki and WikiPapers), but we
> noticed that AcaWiki, one of our main export targets, is licensed CC-BY,
> which cannot use CC-BY-SA material. We like CC-BY-SA because it keeps
> derivatives free for communal reuse; however, we recognize that CC-BY is
> more flexible, since it permits publishing derivatives in journals that
> require full copyright transfer. (Of course, this is talking about copyright
> and copyright transfer; the CC-BY and academic standards against plagiarism
> would require attribution of the source, which is not the issue here.)

Use of 3rd party CC-BY materials actually doesn't work with copyright
assignment (modulo fair use and other exceptions of course). CC-BY
licensors retain their copyright, which could not be assigned by
anyone other than said licensors.

If you're not importing materials from elsewhere, I'd suggest CC-BY.
Actually I'd even suggest CC0 especially if your site is to be
transitory. Or make sure you specify attribution to some stable URL
with copyright info about the materials, or make sure waive the
attribution requirement. But if one of your main goals is to push
other sites toward CC-BY-SA, obviously you should use that license...

> I just now subscribed to this list to post this question, but I'm guessing
> there must have been discussion in the past on why AcaWiki is licensed
> CC-BY. We'd really love to hear thoughts on licensing considerations for
> sites that publish academic summaries and specific recommendations for our
> upcoming data release. In particular, is there a feasible way to release
> CC-BY-SA data, yet somehow make the data available for AcaWiki?

AcaWiki's license has been discussed in the past, but I can't quickly
find the threads, which were inconclusive. IIRC CC-BY was chosen as
AcaWiki started from a small grant from the Hewlett Foundation's
education program, which generally requires CC-BY. That grant is
obviously long over and AcaWiki could move to CC-BY-SA. I think it
would not be a bad idea to given that I think we're pretty interested
in ingesting info from elsewhere, and CC-BY-SA presently maximizes
ability to do that. And/or AcaWiki could depend on fair use and other
exceptions.

Mike




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