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Subject: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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Re: [cc-education] Giveback

From: "Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>
To: "development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons" <cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [cc-education] Giveback
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:59:34 -0500 (EST)

> For every hour that her class spends using open course content,
> the teacher and/or her students owe an hours time
> (contributing to the project)

well, you say this is a "moral" obligation, not a "legal"
obligation, which begs the question as to why you would
then put it in a legal license?

I have a hard time seeing how it would be legally enforcable,
so it might be made null and void anyway.

If it isn't a legally binding clause, then you could simply
slap it on the work as a "moral" clause that contains no
legal bearing, and still say the work is CC licensed.

I think that wikipedia has shown that you need to make
the tools so that editing a single word is extremely easy,
which will then encourage the many small additions you speak of.
Wikipedia could have attempted a moral clause, but it didn't.
instead it used a simple GPL license and pasted a "moral"
clause throughout saying: "Anyone may edit this page".

> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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> Hi, folks, I'm new to this list.  My background is that I have spent
> the last seven years developing open course collaborations: communities
> of practice where educators, professionals and students collaborate to
> create and share open, reusable learning assets.  The Harvey Project
> (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://harveyproject.org";>http://harveyproject.org</a>
> and
> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
>
> href="http://opencourse.org/Collaboratories/harveyproject";>http://opencourse.org/Collaboratories/harveyproject</a>),
> founded in 1998,
> is an open course collaboration for physiology.  OpenCourse.org
> (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://opencourse.org";>http://opencourse.org</a>)
> is a platform to support the creation of open
> course collaborations, like SourceForge for academic course
> developers.  Both projects received funding from NSF. 
>  
> The reason I am here is that I would like to suggest a new license
> clause (in addition to attribution, share-alike, etc.) for open
> content: giveback.  In my experience developing open course content,
> I
> have found that lack of feedback and participation by most faculty
> teaching with my online materials -- not to mention their students --
> is a severe limitation.  It limits the review and improvement of such
> resources (the many eyeballs = shallow bugs phenomenon).  It limits
> the
> credit that academic developers can claim from skeptical colleagues
> ("how do you know anyone is actually using your online tutorial?"). 
> And it limits the anonymous adopters themselves, making their learning
> curve more  arduous.  At this rate, open content will never
> impact
> mainstream educators in my lifetime. 
>  
> I am convinced, based on my experience with academic online
> collaborations, two changes are sorely needed: 
> <ol>
> <li>low-threshold, low-friction ways for adopters to participate in
> and contribute to the open course collaboration, and</li>
> <li>a license clause that makes the need for such "giveback"
> explicit.</li>
> </ol>
> I have spoken with Mia Garlick and David Wiley about the giveback
> notion and they suggested I post it to this list.  So here I
> am!  I
> have attached a short document that describes what I have in mind in
> more detail.  My questions for you are two: 
> <ul>
> <li>Would you consider adding such a giveback clause to your present
> license framework?  That would be my preference, since I am not eager
> to see the sort of licence proliferation that has happened in open
> source occur in the open content domain as well.</li>
> <li>Whether or not you think giveback has a place in the Creative
> Commons framework (now or later), would you be willing to help me frame
> a working license so we can start putting it into practice?</li>
> </ul>
> I look forward to hearing your thoughts. 
>  
> - Rob 
> <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> * Dr. Robert S. Stephenson, Assoc. Prof.
> * E-learning Architect
> * <a
> class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
>
> href="mailto:rstephe AT sun.science.wayne.edu";>rstephe AT sun.science.wayne.edu</a>
> * (313) 577-2869
> * Assoc. Prof., Biological Sciences
> * Wayne State University, Detroit MI 48202
> * <a
> class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
>
> href="http://sun.science.wayne.edu/%7Erstephe";>http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~rstephe</a>
> *
> * The Harvey Project
> * Open Course Physiology on the Web
> * <a
> class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://HarveyProject.org";>http://HarveyProject.org</a>
> * <a
> class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://OpenCourse.org";>http://OpenCourse.org</a>
> *
> * Was I helpful? Let others know:
> * <a
> class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://rate.affero.net/rstephe";>http://rate.affero.net/rstephe</a>
> *
> * gpg key fingerprint:
> * 4255 FB43 17C8 2B80 8074 7DB6 7DD7 939B F3F6 CB92
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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--
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/

[cc-education] Giveback, Robert Stephenson, 11/16/2005
- Re: [cc-education] Giveback, Greg London, 11/17/2005
  - Re: [cc-education] Giveback, Robert Stephenson, 11/18/2005
    - Re: [cc-education] Giveback, David, 11/19/2005