development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[tom poe <tompoe AT amihost.com>]

Hi:  My personal feelings about an education license are grounded in the
importance of the Public Domain.  Choose the Public Domain license, and
let the world enjoy.  The reality, however, as seen with the DASTAR case
about WWII footage brings home the need to restrict works in education.

Currently, there is a popular license selection, attribution, no
commercial, share-alike for general use.  Why not simply go with that,
and add the color code that signifies a special interest in education?
Thanks,
Tom Poe
Open Studios
Reno, NV
http://www.studioforrecording.org/

On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 12:28, David Wiley wrote:
> 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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