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  • From: Chitu Okoli <Chitu.Okoli AT concordia.ca>
  • To: "AcaWiki general (listserv)" <acawiki-general AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [acawiki-general] Proposal: AcaWiki to BY-SA
  • Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:35:05 -0500

Mike, you asked me to comment on your proposal, but in fact you included a number of distinct items in the post:

1. "This is do-able, though adding a licensing field to the summary form is annoying: boring and confusing for any contributor who don't already care too much."

I don't see why this would be annoying, boring or confusing. Contributors who don't care would probably just ignore it just like they ignore all the other default copyright wording in the submission form. Contributors who do care would appreciate it.

SJ's suggestion of letting users set their preferred licensing defaults sounds good at first, but it might have some unintended long-term consequences. In effect, user defaults would only work if they result in more restrictive licenses:
* User default CC0 would only work on new pages created by that user, or pages that are already CC0. For BY and BY-SA pages, it would have no effect.
* User default CC-BY would upgrade CC0 pages they work on to CC-BY, For CC-BY-SA pages, it would have no effect.
* User default CC-BY-SA would upgrade any page they work on to CC-BY-SA.

I think it can be surmised that the long-term effect of letting users set their default license preference would be that the vast majority of articles would become BY-SA (e.g. user with BY-SA default corrects a typo on a BY article: article switches to BY-SA). Thus, if there is the desire that as many articles as possible in the repository be BY, then it might not be a good idea to make it so easy to specify BY-SA. Perhaps it would be better to require users to make that explicit choice every time they edit an article that is not already BY-SA.


2. "But if we're going to have such a field, I demand a CC0 option. :)"

This is a distinct discussion--whether to add CC0 as an alternative option.

3. "We might also use this juncture to clarify that all metadata (such as bibliographic info and categories) is public domain, explicitly CC0 going forward. We should do that no matter what, right?"

I agree that making metadata explicitly CC0 would be a good idea.

4. "Ochado, would implementation of the above proposal un-prevent you from contributing going forward?"

I assume that this question refers to point #3 above. My principle here is that since the metadata is not an original contribution by any of the AcaWiki contributors (unless the author or publisher of the article contributes to AcaWiki), then it is only fair to release such data as CC0. My personal preference for CC-BY-SA is in regard to my own original contributions.

5. "
Do you think that would be the case for others demanding copyleft?"

I honestly cannot speak for anyone else :-)

~ Chitu
 

5 mars 2013 18:36
Here's the comment I just left

This is do-able, though adding a licensing field to the summary form is annoying: boring and confusing for any contributor who don't already care too much. But if we're going to have such a field, I demand a CC0 option. :)  We might also use this juncture to clarify that all metadata (such as bibliographic info and categories) is public domain, explicitly CC0 going forward. We should do that no matter what, right? Ochado, would implementation of the above proposal un-prevent you from contributing going forward? Do you think that would be the case for others demanding copyleft?

Mike


24 février 2013 18:47
I reorganized the wiki according to SJ's recommendation, and added his recent comments.

In addition, I made the following proposal for implementing SJ's "Default BY, opt-in BY-SA" option:
  1. A new SMW property "License" will be created.
  2. All existing articles will be filled in with the default value "BY".
  3. In the page edit view, users will be given the option to set the license for each edit they contribute.
  4. The default value for all new edits will be "BY".
  5. Users will have the option to set the license for their edit to "BY-SA". There might be a brief text encouraging BY contributions, but requiring BY-SA in the case of incorporating BY-SA content.
  6. If a user sets their edit to "BY-SA", then that article's license will switch irrevocably to "BY-SA"; no editing of the license property will henceforth be permitted (except perhaps by an administrator or bureaucrat)--this could be perhaps enforced with a protected template.
  7. Perhaps creating a BY-SA article can be done by anyone, but switching license for an existing article from BY to BY-SA would be a flagged revision requiring verification by an administrator.
 ~ Chitu



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