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  • From: Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com>
  • To: Chitu Okoli <Chitu.Okoli AT concordia.ca>
  • Cc: "AcaWiki general \(listserv\)" <acawiki-general AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [acawiki-general] Proposal: AcaWiki to BY-SA
  • Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:51:03 -0800

Thanks for adding the alternative proposal to the wiki; I basically agree with your analysis.

The theory for permissive licensing is that it removes (relative to copyleft) another barrier to use, hence will generally be more used. Makes sense, but it's really difficult to find comparisons where other factors don't swamp licensing as causes for achieving great or not great use. Same for contribution. Indeed, in a previous thread on this https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/acawiki-general/2012-March/000333.html I asked:
Has anyone published on the importance of copyleft for the popularity
of Wikipedia or other projects? I suspect copyleft is often helpful,
but this is just a gut feeling that I think merits much closer
examination -- I'd guess tens of thousands of emails, not to mention
other forms of communications, have been sent debating the optimality
of copyleft and permissive licensing, almost exclusively based on gut
feeling, which is a bit sad considering how central license choice is
seen to be (which is also a bit sad, but that's another topic). But
this is a tangent. If there are any relevant papers I would love to
summarize them. :-)
In the case of AcaWiki, I'd bet that due to close connections to and expectations from Wikimedia communities, that adding -SA would help a bit with contribution and not harm dissemination much. Another way of saying I support the proposal to make BY-SA the default AcaWiki license.

Mike

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:19 PM, Chitu Okoli <Chitu.Okoli AT concordia.ca> wrote:
I hope SJ doesn't mind, but I added his variation to the wiki discussion: http://acawiki.org/AcaWiki:License_change_proposal. I also I added my comment to it: I think this variation would be too confusing and burdensome on reusers--they would have to dig through and interpret history pages to verify the correct license that applies to the current version.

I apologize for arguing so strongly, since I'm a newcomer, but this point has really always kept me from getting more involved with AcaWiki. (Please note that I tend to agree with SJ that CC-0 is even better than CC-BY for some use cases--open data comes to mind--but I personally don't think it is the best license for a resource like AcaWiki.) I could offer an alternate proposal that could possibly permit both BY and BY-SA versions of articles in a simpler format, but before I do that, I would really like to see some more compelling reasons given in support of CC-BY for AcaWiki.

I seem to remember a discussion or mention or implication some time back that CC-BY would facilitate widespread public dissemination of AcaWiki summaries. Other than reuse on CC-BY-SA sites like Wikimedia, are there other examples where AcaWiki summaries have been used in outlets that make scholarly research more visible and accessible to the general public? I really don't know, so I'm sincerely asking.

I remember observing many years ago the discussion that went behind the licensing of WikiNews, which I believe is the only Wikimedia project that is not licensed CC-BY-SA (I might be mistaken, though). It was originally public domain, and is now CC-BY. The main reason for the decision was to facilitate widespread dissemination and reuse of the articles. I really don't know for sure, but it is my impression that although the project maintains a very active group of contributors, its goal of having its articles widely disseminated has never been realized.

Are there other reasons for keeping AcaWiki CC-BY? I ask this with a genuine desire to learn, as I'm new here and I only know bits and pieces of the history.

~ Chitu

21 février 2013 17:31
I support a variation on this theme:

State that Acawiki will not add any licensing restrictions that included or transwikied material doesn't require. 

So: Any page that is solely the work of its acawiki author would be CC-BY.  Pages that incorporate CC-SA material would become CC-SA.

It is always safe to use material you find on Acawiki under CC-SA restrictions; but if you confirm that it was purely the result of edits on Acawiki, you can use it under CC-BY.

SJ

* CC-0 is actually my license of choice.  CC-BY is second best.  I don't want to conflate the two points by bringing up the BY-vs-0 discussion here.





--
Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
20 février 2013 22:59
Thanks, Mike! On the page you created, I started a list of some sites I'm aware of with BY-SA academic summaries (though many of them might not quite fit AcaWiki's standards). Hopefully, others can add to the list.

I should probably disclose now that I have two websites (which I added to the list) that have a bunch of summaries which I really hope could find a permanent home on AcaWiki. As I said, though, I'm not sure if their formats quite fit.

~ Chitu

20 février 2013 22:24


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