[od-discuss] UK OGL Compliant?

Tue Dec 13 10:36:46 UTC 2011

To return to this very useful thread (apologies for dropping it at my end!)

On 19 October 2011 18:56, Mike Linksvayer <ml at creativecommons.org> wrote:
> Hi Rufus and all,
>
> I think the 3 clauses you've called out are quite problematic. IANAL
> but "ensure" sounds burdensome, "official" is unclear, and "mislead"
> is ripe for abuse. As the OKD draws much from the OSD, which itself is
> based on the DFSG, I take license to call out the
> http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html#tentacles_of_evil test. I
> think analogously, if an oppressive government comes to power, the OGL
> provides built-in excuses for suppression of uses of "open"
> information it finds disagreeable. Maybe this concern is over the top,
> just putting it out there.

Excellent points Mike. So on this basis we'd be leaning towards
non-conformance for the OGL (and any similar licenses). If so I'm
wondering if we want to add some clarificatory language to the
Definition around the provision of additional restrictions.

> The clauses, even if OKD compliant, are also problematic for
> compatibility with other licenses, though I don't understand why
> sharealike licenses in particular -- eg can one practically adapt an
> OGL work and release under CC-BY or ODC-BY? I know there's an
> expressed intention to permit that, but downstream users would need to
> be more careful than they'd need to be with a CC-BY or ODC-BY work
> that doesn't incorporate OGL material. In any case it would be good to
> document the OKD conformance approval process and in said
> documentation encourage thinking about issues beyond narrow
> conformance such as proliferation and compatibility.
> http://opensource.org/approval may be a good place to start from.

Ditto. Do you have suggestions for specific mods to:

<http://opendefinition.org/licenses/process/>

Rufus