[od-discuss] no endorsement clauses and OKD conformance (was Re: Up and Coming: Open Government Licence in Canada (OGL-C))

Sun Dec 16 09:06:04 UTC 2012

I have been going back and forth over this one.

As conditions, the clauses from the OGL-C could be seen as contradictory.

   - acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution
   statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible,
   provide a link to this Licence;
   - ensure that you do not use the Information in a way that suggests any
   official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use
   of the Information;

One meaning of the word "endorse" is "approval".  So, Do I have approval to
use this data or not?  Not exactly the same meaning, I know, but it's close.

I think the "move to no-permission" suggestion  for OGL-C is valid.  I
think it satisfies both the conditions of the definition and the desire to
remind folks that they aren't getting extra things like endorsement.  I
really hope they can move it.

Written as conditions, I think one effect of these clauses is that they
turn a potential fraud allegation into both a fraud and
copyright infringement allegation.  e.g. If this license was in place and
someone was accused of saying that the publisher endorsed them, then they
would be facing not only a possible fraud allegation, but also they are now
using the data without permission, so they have committed a copyright
offence as well.  Without this clause they are accused of fraud, which is
bad enough, but they are both serious.  I don't know enough about either of
these to go any further with this line of thinking but it's one additional
twist I thought of and perhaps it's meaningless.

Practically though, for the vast majority of folks, the effect is clutter.
 And though I would prefer that the license be clear and concise, I think
one of the reasons the open definition exists is because we realise that
the license writers aren't always going to be able and willing to achieve
that so we provide this reference and conformance test to add some clarity
and ease of use.  If we can't get some movement on this clause in the OGL
and it's forks I would be tempted to update the definition.  The problem we
face is how to allow it.  Do we add it to the integrity section as you
suggest?  Or, do we need to actually allow another type of restriction,
which is how it's currently worded in the OGL-C.  And if we allow this
restriction, then why not others?  Slippery.

H

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 11:34 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com>wrote:

> Another data point of sorts --
> http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause includes
>
>     "Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its
> contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
> this software without specific prior written permission."
>
> This is a bread-and-butter open source license; nobody thinks it is
> non-open. But I gather that people who know and care (uncertain
> proportion) prefer the version without that clause. Lots of other open
> source licenses have similar, try
>
> https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Aopensource.org%2Flicenses%2F%20endorse
> ... but again, none exactly best practice licenses, and note that
> Apache 1.1 had one, Apache 2.0 does not.
>
> Also, the OSD, from which the OKD is derived, has commentary in
> http://opensource.org/osd-annotated making it somewhat clear that
> no-endorsement is thought to be a kind of integrity clause:
>
>     Rationale: Encouraging lots of improvement is a good thing, but
> users have a right to know who is responsible for the software they
> are using. Authors and maintainers have reciprocal right to know what
> they're being asked to support and protect their reputations.
>
> The history of open source shows that part of what we here are
> thinking about no-endorsement clauses is true: they're unnecessary.
> But they also haven't caused any problems that I know of. Should we go
> further than that and say they're non-open?
>
> Maybe the increased pertinence of government knowledge and policy
> since FLOSS expectations were formed makes may-not-imply-endorsement
> more dangerous?
>
> A middle ground, that I'm currently in favor of, would be to add a
> comment in the integrity section saying no-endorsement clauses don't
> by themselves make a license non-open, but they are superfluous, and
> recommended to be no-permission rather than may-not if present at all.
>
> Mike
>

-- 
Herb Lainchbury
Dynamic Solutions Inc.
www.dynamic-solutions.com
http://twitter.com/herblainchbury
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