[od-discuss] Open Government License - Surrey 2.0

Sun Mar 15 19:27:42 UTC 2015

On 03/15/2015 12:39 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 1:31 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com
> <mailto:ml at gondwanaland.com>> wrote:
> 
>     That's a reasonable summary, with these caveats:
>     * I have reservations, not sure if anyone else does.
>     * My reservations would go away if license steward/only possible
>     licensor explained that they are not confused.
> 
> 
> We agree your problem is not with the licence in an abstract context,
> but how Surrey will implement it. I note that confusion over licences is
> widespread - in my own field of scholarly communications there are  many
> licensors who are confused about how to operate CC licences - often by
> adding additional restrictions or assuming that for example they affect
> issues such as patents .  This does not invalidate the licence, but the
> application of the licence

The analogous case in scholarly communications would be if a publisher
made up their own license, which only they could use, and publisher
employees told people the license means something other than what it
says. There would be a shitstorm on social media. Maybe the publisher
would (a) come around and state that they agree the license means what
it says, or (b) maybe they wouldn't and people would eye the license
(and application by the publisher, the only possible application) with
great suspicion.

In that situation I do not think it would be helpful in general or to
the reputation of the OD to approve the license before publisher had
taken path (a).

There isn't going to be a shitstorm about Surrey, but I still don't feel
good about approving a license when there is still apparent confusion on
the part of the principal entity drafting and using the license.

Going back to previous thread that I failed to reply to --

On 03/06/2015 05:12 PM, Paul Norman wrote:
> On 3/6/2015 3:18 PM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>> I would like Surrey to clarify what they think the license means. If
>> they, the only possible licensor, completely misunderstand the license,
>> it seems the license is effectively as bad as a reusable license which
>> is written so confusingly that all possible licensors completely
>> misunderstand it. We wouldn't ever approve such a license.
>
> I would like someone from the OD AC to clarify this with Surrey - as
then the person asking can choose better wording than myself and ask in
a more official manner.

I'm happy to do this if nobody else wishes to. I would need a contact.

Mike