pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

Richard Morris writes:
 > Chad wrote:
 >  > 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.
 > 
 > I guess the group need some more discussion on this.
 > 
 > Q1 What sort of attribution do we want on the project.
 > Possible choices:
 >      1. Complete attribution, so each bit can be attributed.
 >      2. Per Plant Attribution: so contributers to each plant
 >              can be listed.
 >      3. Whole database: attribution.
 >      4. No attribution: everyone is anonymous.
 > 
 > My preference would be 1 because
 >      - its quite fun to do
 >      - we would be quite interested in approaching
 >        other contributors to find out if they
 >        would be willing to let pfaf use their
 >        edits etc. in our own, possibly commercial, DB.
 >        This type of attribution would make that easy for us.
 > 
 > 2 would be preferable over 3 and not at all keen on 4.

As OSS geek I'm completely on the other end of the spectrum.  I do not
want to create a commercial product.  I want to create something that
helps people and helps promote the permaculture philosophy.  I found
PFAF very useful and if you recall over a year ago I had written my
own perl interface for it to make it more useful to me.  During that
time I saw a lot of ways to improve it and thus PCPDB.  Additionally I
think atomic attribution would add a lot of bloat and it does not
sound like fun to me.

As an example of what I think would be fair and work well, the Linux
kernel which is covered by the GPL has had thousands of contributions
by many different people.  Most [all] of them are listed in the
CREDITS file with their name, email, physical address, and a
description of their contributions.  Here are the first 4 entries in
that list:

N: Matti Aarnio
E: mea@nic.funet.fi
D: Alpha systems hacking, IPv6 and other network related stuff
D: One of assisting postmasters for vger.kernel.org's lists
S: (ask for current address)
S: Finland

N: Dragos Acostachioaie
E: dragos@iname.com
W: http://www.arbornet.org/~dragos
D: /proc/sysvipc
S: C. Negri 6, bl. D3
S: Iasi 6600
S: Romania

N: Monalisa Agrawal
E: magrawal@nortelnetworks.com
D: Basic Interphase 5575 driver with UBR and ABR support.
S: 75 Donald St, Apt 42
S: Weymouth, MA 02188

N: Dave Airlie
E: airlied@linux.ie
W: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~airlied
D: NFS over TCP patches
S: University of Limerick
S: Ireland

In terms of the 4 categories you listed I would guess this is about
2.5.  This is my preference.  As a side note, the GPL does not require
atomic attribution like the CC-by part seems to read to me.  I still
think the CC license would work if all contributors agree to use a
credits page.

 > Q2 Version control
 > 
 > I feel DB would need sort of version control system.
 > At the very least to stop some script kiddy just deleting
 > all the data. We get quite a few 'You Suck' messages added
 > to our readers comments so chance of corruption is high.

/. <http://slashdot.org/> is a great example of how to handle
registered users and anonymous ones, self moderate, and allow the good
information to filter to the top.  The "You Suck" posts could easily
be moderated into deletion.  Moderation only happens by registered
users.

 > Q3 Edit style
 >      I've mentioned before that I see some problems with
 >      allowing free edits. Problem is especially with
 >      medicinal uses in that some one could add some false
 >      info to DB with possible health risk. Attribution
 >      and only allowing additions could help protect
 >      the projects name.
 > 
 >      In my ideal world I'd really like some review process
 >      so that edits are checked by a review board to
 >      preserve accuracy.
 > 
 >      On the reflection this is a bit over the top.
 >      And wikii style free edits is probably OK.
 >      (as long as there is version control and some way
 >      of tracking changes, & restoring backups)
 > 
 > What do people think of these issues.

Sound like you're answering your own question here.  See also my
response to Q2.

 ><sig snip>

Richard Morris writes:
 > 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.

Well starting sometime in early Feb. I initiated an email dialog
urging a change in the license.  Your responses came about every 2
weeks falling off to not replying at all to my last message prior to
releasing PCPDB.  I got wound up because I felt like you were ignoring
me. 

 > Why not just get it right from the start!

Releasing PFAF under the original PFAF license does not seem like much
of an attempt was made to 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.

Well, one reason to use the old license, is because it has no clause
restricting sub-licensing such as paragraph 2, 4 of the GPL.  I
essentially can decide to release a derived work, under any license so
long as the new license doesn't violate any clause of the PFAF one.

 ><big snip>
 >      
 > 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.

That sounds good, except for the part about still releasing under the
old license.  I would stop that practice ASAP.

Also, when you say we, who are you talking about?  Is there really
much interest in this project.  I've been watching the weblog pretty
closely and have been completely underwhelmed by the response.  Not
sure how many unique users but only about 100 page requests since I
posted the release announcement.  I'm seriously questioning if there
is a need for this kind of project.  It's been fun so far and I've
learned a lot, but currently, playing with high availability clusters
seems like more of a growth edge for me.  Essentially I need to hear
that people want this.


Chad Knepp
>From lildragon@saber.net  Sun Mar 23 00:00:22 2003
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Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: attribution
From: BK <lildragon@saber.net>
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Hey Folks,

Reguarding attribution, the concept of tracking every single change and
crediting would seem to bog the DB with more info then about actual plants.
It would seem useful if there was a credits list, each unique user who added
info would be appended to the list, and based on the number of
changes/Kilobytes of additions their ranking on the list would rise towards
the top. With some sort of limited explaination of the changes.

I'm definitely interested in the DB, and I would be cool if it could somehow
have extensions into other PC realms (designs, guilds, PC sites of
interest). I've been really wanting to sit down and play with PHP and SQL
and try setting such things up, but haven't yet gotten around to it. I too
wonder how many folks would use the DB, it would be something quite helpful.

Anyhow, best of wishes in these wierdest of times,
BK 
>From georg@websuxxess.com  Tue Mar 25 04:06:35 2003
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Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: attribution
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hi, pc techies:

i for one use the pfaf database frequently, find it quite practical, with
the big lack of cross-referencing or cross-linking as for guilds , as well
as additional fileds of infos like upstream ethnobotanical info, that doesnt
fit into the fairly narrow "cultivation", guess you could also call it
design-relevant data. and, of course, i would like the opportunity to input
all kinds of data, from additional species to cultivation, uses, and the
abovementioned crosslinkings. i have no clue about the tech details, and i
am not going to make myself smart along that line.


> In terms of the 4 categories you listed I would guess this is about
> 2.5.  This is my preference.

fine for me.


> /. <http://slashdot.org/> is a great example of how to handle
> registered users and anonymous ones, self moderate, and allow the good
> information to filter to the top.  The "You Suck" posts could easily
> be moderated into deletion.  Moderation only happens by registered
> users.

sounds good, but how do you verify registrations?



> posted the release announcement.  I'm seriously questioning if there
> is a need for this kind of project.  It's been fun so far and I've
> learned a lot, but currently, playing with high availability clusters
> seems like more of a growth edge for me.  Essentially I need to hear
> that people want this.

i think it would be a good thing (maybe technically inpossible), to make the
information of the db in some legible structure available in printable form
as well, so the 95% of humanity not online can use it too. if something can
be incorporated, that would enable you to click a button once a month, that
throws all the info into legible and sensible connect into some text format,
which is then easily convertible into .pdf which can then be uploaded, it
would be great in my imagination. all those folks who can manage once to get
online via a friend of a friend in an university or something, can then
download, print and copy in that institution, and then take it back out with
them into the bush (="bush") for distribution amongst friends.

comments and ideas?

georg