[od-discuss] UK OGL Compliant?

Tue Dec 13 17:33:13 UTC 2011

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 2:36 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
> On 19 October 2011 18:56, Mike Linksvayer <ml at creativecommons.org> wrote:
>> 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).

Makes sense to me, where similar = containing the problematic clauses
(it is possible to imagine a future ~OGL without them).

> If so I'm
> wondering if we want to add some clarificatory language to the
> Definition around the provision of additional restrictions.

I think additional restrictions are out of bounds implicitly if they
threaten the freedoms (roughly 1-4, 7-11) and aren't one of the two
restrictions mentioned (5&6). But additional clarification could be
useful.

>> 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/>

First, I hadn't seen that. I see now it is in a drop down. I'd suggest
replacing the instruction to email this list with a link to the above
at the top of http://opendefinition.org/licenses/

If there's appetite for including OSI-like thinking in the OKD
approval process, I'd suggest starting from the OSI docs rather than
building up the super lightweight current process page (but maybe I'm
just lazy). One approach would be to put relevant OSI docs in
etherpad...

Mike