[od-discuss] Quick note on what it means to be "compatible" [was Re: OD conformant proposal: Open Government Licence v2.0 ]

Tue Jul 9 01:33:59 UTC 2013

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 7, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
>>>> - re "This means that when the Information is adapted and licensed
>>>> under either of those licences, you automatically satisfy the
>>>> conditions of the OGL when you comply with the other licence." - Does
>>>> this license allow adaptation under another license? I see no
>>>> indication of that elsewhere in the license, and it would not be the
>>>> default situation under Berne, which is potentially quite confusing.
>>>
>>> ...that's what it sounds like to me. It could be stated even more
>>> clearly, but an improvement over 1.0.
>>
>> Let me be explicit about what the problem here, as an educational
>> point for those on the list who might draft or be asked to consult in
>> the drafting of a license.
>>
>> As a matter of basic copyright law, you can't simply "change the
>> license" on someone else's work. So it's best practice to define
>> compatibility in one of two ways:
>>
>> 1. The two licenses have permissions/obligations that match up, so
>> someone who complies with the more restrictive one (in this case,
>> probably CC SA) can be certain of having complied with the more
>> permissive one.
>>
>> 2. The more permissive license explicitly permits compliance with its
>> requirements by complying with the more restrictive license.
>
> To be explicit about why I said "could be stated even more clearly,
> but an improvement over 1.0" in terms of the two points above...
>
>> This license does neither, so it is confusing what it means to make an
>> adaptation under another license - do you still have to comply with
>> OGL? do you have permission to comply only with CC? something else?
>
> I read v1 and v2 as attempting both, and v2 coming closer on both.
>
> On matching up so that OGL UK 1.0 matches up as a donor to CC-BY, it
> fairly plainly fails due to the terms that were removed in 2.0.
>
> But it says is is "aligned to be interoperable" which is severely
> lacking as an explicit permission, especially in light of failing to
> actually be aligned, but it seems better than nothing.

It doesn't help me tell a client what requirements actually need to be
complied with. So it is roughly the same as nothing, except as a
gesture of intent that *something* is supposed to work. I just don't
know what that something is.

[And that's the case if I, and the authors, agree on what it means to
be "interoperable" or "compatible"; I'm beginning to suspect that such
agreement is actually harder to find that it looks at first glance.]

> Does OGL UK 2.0 actually fail to match up? My naive reading says that
> is probably does match up: one will comply with OGL UK 2.0 if they
> comply with CC-BY.

I have not done an analysis. These are easier with permissive licenses
than copyleft licenses, but still notoriously error-prone and painful
to do.

> Separately, I wonder if we should state anything about compatibility
> of various licenses at http://opendefinition.org/licenses/ ?
>
> Of course we can't provide certain answers, but right now someone who
> isn't already a copyright specialist merely looking for an Open
> license has no hope of even being aware of the issue.

I'd be loath to do it without a formal definition of compatibility,
which we don't have. (The closest that I'm aware of is
http://opensource.com/law/11/9/mpl-20-copyleft-and-license-compatibility
)

Luis