pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Plants For A Future wrote:
> So Richard, I must confess I'm feeling a little pissy about this whole
> license deal.  I don't feel that you've been taking me seriously.  I'm
> glad you decided to respond to me email.  I'm disappointed that it
> took my releasing PCPDB in order for you to do it.

I don't quite get what your wound up about.
I've been trying to workout a way that pfaf would feel
happy with contributing their data to the project.
This involves getting the license right from the ground up.
Averyone seems to think that our current copyright statement.
is full of holes so it just seems a bit odd to use that.

Why not just get it right from the start!

> Since PCPDB is based on the November 2000 release of PFAF, I believe I
> am within legal rights by conforming to and displaying the license
> contained within that distribution.  I have closely examined and in
> the past I have encouraged the adoption of the CC by-nc-sa by PFAF.
> One of the reasons I was encouraging the adoption of a *real* license
> is because the PFAF one is legally way fucking abusable.  

SO why use it!

> Read the
> first sentence of this paragraph again.

OK so it would make us happy if you replace the copyright statment
with the CC By-nc-sa statment.

This is whats leagally required to appear under License
---
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License 
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0).
---

This is additional text we would like to appear.
---
(Briefly you can copy, distribute and display this works but: 
Attribution is required, its for Non-Commercial purposes, and it's Share 
Alike (GNUish/copyleft) i.e. has an identical license.)
We also ask that you let us know (webmaster@pfaf.org) if you link to, 
redistribute, make a derived work or do anything groovy with this 
information.
---

The following rdf should also appear

<!--

<rdf:RDF xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/";
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";>
<Work 
rdf:about="http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/pfaf/find_lat?COM=dandelion&CAN=top";>
   <dc:title>Plants For A Future, Species Database 
(COM=dandelion&CAN=top)</dc:title>
   <dc:date>2003-03-21</dc:date>
   <dc:description>A database of information about useful 
plants</dc:description>
   <dc:creator><Agent>
      <dc:title>Ken Fern, Richard Morris</dc:title>
   </Agent></dc:creator>
   <dc:rights><Agent>
      <dc:title>Plants For A Future/Ken Fern</dc:title>
   </Agent></dc:rights>
   <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text"; />
<license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0"; />
</Work>

<License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0";>
   <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attribution"; />
   <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/ShareAlike"; />
   <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduction"; />
   <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribution"; />
   <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/DerivativeWorks"; />
   <prohibits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/CommercialUse"; />
   <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice"; />
</License>

</rdf:RDF>

-->


> You may also recall that I complained a little about the attribution
> (by) clause of the CC license.  It reads to me, and seems like a hell
> of a lot of work, that virtually every word changed must be tracked
> and attributed to their respective authors.  I've started to implement
> this functionality but it seems absolutely nuts.

See seperate post.

> Ok, I'm done venting.  I apologize if I was a little too harsh.
>
> I think it would be best to have all contributers agree to using the
> same license, relinquish the right of atomic attribution to the
> project, and have a credits page listing contributors and perhaps the
> nature of their contribution.  The aforementioned CC license would do
> fine.  This seems sane and fair to me.  How does that sound to you?

Probably OK.

> If this does sound good to you, sometime in the future I would really
> appreciate a more recent snapshot of the CC licensed PFAF database in
> a format that is importable to mysql.

We will be contributing an upto date snap shot of the pfaf db
with the CC license. It will take me a bit of time before
I can do this (doing a new release of the DB takes about a day).

If you wish you can get the Feb 02 release from
        ftp://ftp.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pub/pfaf/ascii.zip
it contains scripts for easy import into sql. Archive still
contains old copyright notice.

                Rich
--
Plants for a Future: 7000 useful plants
Web:   http://www.pfaf.org/ same as http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/
Post:  1 Lerryn View, Lerryn, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 0QJ
Tel:     01208 872 963 / 0845 458 4719  
Email: webmaster@pfaf.org
PFAF electronic mailing list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pfaf