[okd-discuss] Re: RFC: Open Knowledge Definition v0.1

Tue Sep 13 14:10:47 UTC 2005

Dear Peter,

Thanks for you response which I really appreciated as I know how busy 
you must be. Below is a reply to your comments. I hope you will not mind 
me cc'ing the public discuss list on this. The fact that it may be read 
by a more general audience is also why i include below summary info 
about Open Access.

Regards,

Rufus

Peter Suber wrote:
> Rufus and Co.,
>      Sorry for the delay in replying.  I've been swamped.
>      I think the definition would be easier to understand, and stronger, 
> if the access provision called for "open access" plus modifiability.  

Good point. I will definitely try and incorporate this in the next draft 
in some way.

> Open access is already well defined in several public statements; I 
> summarize them in my Open Access Overview, 
> <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm>.
>      I say this would be easier to understand because OA is already 
> widely known.  I say that it would be stronger because OA requires free 
> online access while the draft definition below does not.
>      This comment would only entail revising Section 0 on access.  All 
> of the other sections could remain as they are.

The omission of free online access is intentional. I think this is 
something I should make clearer (and do below) but the main point can be 
summarized as:

   Open Access is a policy while the Definition is just a Definition

It is there so if say, you were running 'KnowledgeForge' you could say: 
we will only host projects that have an OKD compatible license or if you 
were running a petition on open geodata you could say we want open 
geodata where that means geodata licensed under an OKD compatible license.

Open Access and the Open Knowledge Definition
=============================================

There exist obvious commonalities between Open Access and Open Knowledge 
Definition. However there are significant differences that warrant the 
OKD being seperate:

1. The most important difference is that Open Access concerns itself 
both with the license of a work **and** with its being made available. 
In fact in most people mind's this is more important than the licensing 
terms:

   "The best-known part of the BBB definition is that OA content must be 
free of charge for all users with an internet connection."
   [Peter Suber, http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-04.htm]

By contrast the OKD only sets out to set out what an open knowledge 
license must allow. Its aim is to get down core principles as to what 
make knowledge open without discussing in great detail how these 
obligations must be implemented. The distinction can most easily be seen 
in that the statement 'this is an open knowledge project' meaning 
distributed under and open knowledge definition compatible license (just 
as open source means distributed under an open source definition 
compatible license) is distinct from what one would mean by an open 
access project.

Nothing in the OKD prevents charging for access while it would appear OA 
would (this goes to the 'free' as in 'freedom' vs. 'free' as in 'free 
beer'). Under the OKD you are obliged, should you be requested, to make 
available the work for the cost of distribution but you can charge if 
you want (e.g. for the provision of a warranty regarding accuracy).

Similarly the OKD does not obligate anyone to actually publish or 
release their work. Just as with the Open Source Definition the OKD 
simply says: if you *do* release your work, and you wish it to be 'open' 
this is what you should do. OA does require making available (or at the 
very least emphasizes it heavily). This is not to say that this isn't an 
excellent thing to encourage but it is part of a policy not a license 
(it makes sense to say 'we follow an OA policy' but not to say 'we 
follow an OKD policy')

2. Details of licensing. The BBB defn of Open Access (see below) states:

   1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) 
to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a 
license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly 
and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for 
any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship 
(community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for 
enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published 
work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of 
printed copies for their personal use.

This is very similar, but less specific than the OKD. It is also 
confined to activities in a "digital medium", requires a "responsible 
purpose", and implies that you do not have rights to make more than a 
"small number of printed copies for personal use". These are all minor 
items but, for example, a CC Attribution license certainly allows me to 
redistribute a satirical advert for any purpose whatsoever, responsible 
or not.

In summary the aim of the OKD is a very narrow one and is focused on 
cementing the existing consensus on what is and is not an **open 
license** across **diverse** fields (data, content, civic information 
etc). It builds on ideas from Open Access (and many other areas) but 
Open Access is about far, far more.

What is Open Access?
====================

Within the OA community it appears that the consensus definition comes 
from the three seperate declarations of Budapest, Betheseda and Berlin 
(the last two being quite similar). For example Peter Suber, one of the 
leaders of the Open Access movement, refers to them as the BBB 
definition of open access in the SPARC OA newsletter of (2004-09-02) 
[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-04.htm].

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (launched 2002-02-14) is less 
specific than the other two and its main definition of open access 
reduces to:

   "free and unrestricted online availability"

[http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml]

The more lenghty, and precise version comes from the Berlin (2003-10-22) 
and Bethseda (2003-06-20) Declarations (the following is from Berlin 
which differs very slightly from Bethseda):

   Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:

     1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) 
to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a 
license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly 
and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for 
any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship 
(community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for 
enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published 
work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of 
printed copies for their personal use.

     2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, 
including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate 
standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least 
one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the 
Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an 
academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other 
well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, 
unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.

[*The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and 
Humanities*, released by the Max Planck Society and European Cultural 
Heritage Online.Available at:
   http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html]

The Bethseda statement is, for example, used by PLOS, though it is 
interesting that their concrete license choice is Creative Commons 
Attribution (This PLOS page is the first result on Google for the search 
open access defintion with the Bethseda statement second)