[od-discuss] Open Government License - Surrey 2.0

[Herb Lainchbury]

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

It believe we're all in agreement that this is not a conformance issue.

It seems to me that insisting on clarification before a conformance test is
going too far, when we're all in agreement that this is not a conformance
issue.


We haven't asked publishers to provide their interpretation of their own
license before as far as I know.  Doing so would set a new precedent which
I think is beyond the scope of conformance testing.


My preference is to provide helpful feedback to the license publisher
*after* our conformance vote, letting them know about the interpretation
issue.


I think the key here is that Mike is highlighting something that the
definition does not cover.  A licensors interpretation of a license they
are using.  The Definition covers the license itself, and how that license
is applied to a work, but not how a license is interpreted or perceived by
a licensor. I can easily imagine a licensor mis-using any license, even
Creative-Commons for example, and claiming that a consumer needs to pay an
access fee or something even though that's not required by the license.
That doesn't make the license not open, it just means the licensor has
decided to use the license in a way that renders the work not open.


If we're going to introduce a new process where we ask license publishers
for their interpretation of the license they are using then let's discuss
how that should happen, and what we would do with the feedback.


Even if we did ask Surrey for clarification.  What would we do with that
feedback?  Would we judge the license as non-open?  On what basis?  We
don't have a rule for that.


IMHO, it's not appropriate to ask Surrey for clarification before
assessment.  This would be a standard we've never held any other publisher
to.

Having said that, I also don't want to rush the process.  We started this
several months ago.  Surrey was very responsive to us in addressing our
written concerns, and I thought we were ready to move forward.  That may
have been an error in judgement on my part.

So, if we're not ready to vote yet, I am fine with delaying.  Part of the
consequence of vanity licenses is that they cause a lot of waste - for all
parties.


I think going through this process has been useful nonetheless.

Herb





On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com>
wrote:

> 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
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