[od-discuss] OD addendum proposal for dealing with ambiguous license exemptions

Thu Oct 10 05:32:17 UTC 2013

I'm not sure Kent's suggested addition to 1. Access: "The work must be
clearly presented as available under the license." completely
addresses the problem of licenses with vague and broad exemptions. A
work may be clearly presented as available under a license, the
question is whether the license leaves open-ended doubt as to whether
anyone can use the work for any purpose despite broad intent of the
license due to vague and broad exemptions.

Tweaking the 1.2dev addition of 12. License Must Not Impose Additional
Restrictions may also be needed.

Still, Kent's suggestion does make explicit something which was
implicit previously, so I've gone ahead and added it to the 1.2 draft.
And I'm not certain that anything else is really needed.

The 1.2 draft is at
https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/blob/master/source/open-definition-dev.markdown

Fairly easy to read 1.1->1.2 changes at
http://gondwanaland.com/tmp/okd11-dev-wdiff.html

I definitely like splitting up the open work and open license
definitions conceptually. That's what
http://freedomdefined.org/Definition has always done, and lack of that
clarity is why I went through and bolded work and license throughout
the 1.2 draft, so it was easier to see what applied to what, without
really reading and paying close attention.

I think Luis' start on splitting the license and work definitions into
separate sections is good --
https://github.com/tieguy/opendefinition/blob/a991937f15c796f1035265861c8585860086cfd9/source/open-definition-dev.markdown

I'm not sure what some of the TODOs are as they seem to be private
gmail searches. :)

Another TODO for that direction would be to make the totality still
fit with the "Open Definition" moniker, which it seems everyone has
settled on; perhaps just removing "definition" from the two section
headings?

Some things regarding OD versioning to discuss on the call in 9.5
hours and thereafter as necessary:
* Do we need to add anything else regarding licenses with vague and
broad exemptions beyond Kent's addition under Access?
* Should we try to release 1.2 soon, so as to have current assumptions
of the OD AC reflected in the OD that people refer to first?
* Or is there enough win in a split work/license OD (but probably with
no substantive changes) and will to work on it, to push for that
format for 1.2?
* If we go for 1.2 release as soon as possible, presumably work toward
split work/license OD also affords opportunity and might facilitate
tackling further substantive issues in a 1.3 or 2.0 (as warranted).

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Herb Lainchbury
<herb at dynamic-solutions.com> wrote:
> I agree with Luis, that this separation of "open license" and "open work"
> makes sense.
>
> I think Kent's suggestion to address the applicability of the license in the
> Access principle re-enforces my earlier suggestion that applicability
> problems arising out of license terms seem insufficient to deem a license
> not open (unless they prohibit application entirely) precisely because
> Access is not currently addressed as a license issue (as Luis' dev version
> of 2.x demonstrates).
>
> If we want to address exemptions/non-ambiguous applicability as a license
> issue (i.e. we're willing to call a license non-open) then I think there
> needs to be something in the license related clauses that addresses
> exemptions/applicability stating that licenses must be able to be clearly
> and unambiguously be associated with a specific work, a principle we've seen
> violated in recent forks of the OGL.
>
> i.e. I think there needs to be something that addresses both the license (as
> not yet applied) and the work (as applied).
>
> Especially, if we continue, as I think makes sense, down the road of
> separating "open license" from "open work".
>
> Herb
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 4:12 AM, Kent Mewhort <kent at openissues.ca>
>> > wrote:
>> >> Comments, wording adjustments, or alternative proposals welcome.  This
>> >> addition is more to do with legal access and legal use than the present
>> >> actual access, so another option would be to put something similar to
>> >> the
>> >> above in it's own section.
>> >
>> > Right, I need to think about this a bit; other comments welcome. I do
>> > like how you've also addressed the work.
>>
>> I think Kent's suggestion is perfectly fine.
>>
>> I would like to take this opportunity to note that we're using a
>> definition that talks about open works to analyze open licenses. And
>> that's a bit messy and something we might want to address in the
>> future, by splitting out the definition into two parts:
>>
>> 1. what defines an open license
>>
>> 2. what defines an open work
>>
>> The first criteria for an open work would be "is licensed under an
>> open license"; another criteria for an open work would be Kent's "the
>> open license is unambiguously applied", etc.
>>
>> Putting this on the radar-
>> Luis
>>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Herb