pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Peter Edmond wrote:
> My solicitor has highlighted a number of major issues within your
> licencing of the pfaf database. The current setup appears to be
> inconsistent for the following reasons:
>
> 1.      Once one person has bought a copy of it, the Creative Commons (CC)
> license allows that person to distribute it for free.
>
> 2.      Bizarrely, the CC licence does forbid you for selling the database,
> but it does *not* forbid you from charging for the 'duplication' of the
> database.
>
> 3.      The CC licence does not forbid someone for charging others for access
> to the database once you have provided it to them, as this is
> effectively 'performing' or presenting the work.
>
> 4.      There is also some potential inconsistencies with your 'commercial'
> licence, in that a nursery could under the CC licence print out any
> element of the database for its customers, and even charge for the
> printed sheets (based on the fact that they are charging for the paper
> and the distribution/performance costs associated with the sheet.
>
> Can I ask how the current licensing setup came to exist? What are you
> trying to achieve with the licencing?
>
> If you can get some idea of these two question, then I may be able to
> assist with getting your 'marketing/organisation' setup with this sorted
> out.
>
> Incidentally, my personal view is that you distribute the 'core'
> database only, with a link to your website (which should contain
> pictures and the ability to 'evolve'). That way any attempt to duplicate
> your database becomes impossible. In addition you provide the central
> core to the whole database and reap the advertising revenue, whilst
> still retaining your 'friendly CC-like principles'. That way, you can
> distribute the 'core' database free (under a CC-like licence), and what
> will happen is that every distribution will act as free advertising that
> will increase your advertising revenue.
>
> My feeling is that your current approach to this is not tenable. If
> Microsoft like this, then there is nothing to stop them throwing their
> skill (and legal-setup at this), and they'd be capable of obliterating
> your revenue in months. This aspect of the organisation is probably its
> greatest asset if used properly! The fact that 'big' organisations are
> taking interest in this already sounds warning bells to me, and I'd
> remove the current downloadability and change it to 'email for
> information', and get a programming team to change the structure to
> something similar to what I have suggested. Obviously, this is a
> significant change of direction, and would require your organasation to
> discuss and agree.
>
> Regards
>
> Peter
Peter,
        Thanks for some very insightful comments.

The history of the current CC license.

The original license information was:

>>>>>>>>>
All the information in the website is Copyright (c) 1992-2002 Plants For 
A Future and Ken Fern.

We do retain the copyright of this information. You are free to use it 
in any way you see fit, subject to the following conditions:-

1) You do not sell it. You are free to use the information in further 
research, to apply it to the practical use of growing and utilizing the 
plants, or to use it in any other way that you see fit, so long as the 
information contained in the database is not sold by you.

2) When passing on any information contained in this database, by 
whatever means, you acknowledge the contribution of 'Plants for a 
Future' and include this copyright notice.

3) We ask that any information you hold about economic, or useful plants 
is shared with us so that we may improve the database.
>>>>>>>>>

This reflected a policy of making this information freely available, for 
the good of all.

The CC-license was seen as a way for making this a bit more legally 
binding as it reflects the 3 points above, and it comes from a well 
respected source which gives it a bit more legal clout.

It was also chosen to make the permaculture.info project workable. Such 
open source license creates the right sort of environment for atracting 
other contributions.

The CC-license is more restrictive than the other major open 
documentation licences, wikipedia uses the
GNU Free Documentation License
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
which does not have a non-commercial clause at all.
The other major open licences are
http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml and http://opencontent.org/openpub/
but these are now deprecated in favor of Crative Commons.

The share-alike part of the license is actually quite a strong 
disincentive for people abusing the dataset. Beacuse this is a viral 
license condition then it means that a third party using the dataset and 
combining it with other data need to use the same license. Something 
which most commercial companies would not be prepared to do.

This has worked for me releasing code under GPL. I've followed a 
dual-license approach with one license, GPL, for the hackers of this 
world and another for commercial orginisations. Remarkably people have 
paid for the code.

To my knowledge there been one group gardenbed.com who did rip off the 
database, they did give credit, but had advertising and required free 
registration. They now appear to be offline.

A big feather in our cap was getting the data into
Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database (T.E.K.* P.A.D.)
http://ip.aaas.org/tekindex.nsf/TEKPAD?OpenFrameSet.

Rich