[okfn-discuss] Porting a wiki to an open license

Mon Jan 3 16:34:56 UTC 2011

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Ed Pastore <epastore at metagovernment.org>wrote:

> When we opened our wiki, we made it CC:BY-NC-SA. It was something someone
> suggested, and it sounded right: very open, very non-commercial. But, hm...
> apparently a lot of the free content people have a problem with NC, so we're
> game to change it to BY-SA or even something more open. For the record, our
> wiki has always had this copyright page, which has been basically unchanged
> for the history of the wiki:
> http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Metagovernment:Copyrights
>
>
Great!

> My question is about the logistics of porting our wiki. People familiar
> with the concept have suggested that it is not possible to simply remove a
> copyright restriction from a wiki because when people contributed to the
> wiki, they may have had the expectation that their contribution remain under
> that restriction. Is that right, and if so, can you help us work out a way
> to port?
>
> I have come up with some possibilities, but I don't know if any of them
> work and/or are practical.
>
> 1. We just remove the NC. When people contributed content, they gave it to
> us, and we now have the ability to change the copyright if we please. Um...
> would that fly? I suspect some may have problems with it, but what precisely
> would be the consequences? For the record, we are not incorporated: we are
> an adhocracy that is very loosely governed by consensuses formed on an open
> list server (though some day we may incorporate). We also are not associated
> with any country: our members span the globe.
>

You might be able to do this and hope that nobody complains, but probably
not the straight and narrow path unless all contributors have been assigning
copyright to ... I highly doubt that, given lack of formal organization to
assign copyright to. :)

>
> 2. We port all the content to a new wiki with an open license, but on each
> old/ported page, we put an exception note at the bottom saying that this
> content is restricted by NC. However, if we did that, could we ever remove
> that tag? At what point would the page be edited enough to make us free to
> change license?
>

A new wiki would probably be really suboptimal. If you want to take
something like this path, require that all contributions to existing pages
be dual licensed under BY-NC-SA and BY-SA, all new pages under BY-SA, and
remove BY-NC-SA from the former when you (ie some interested community
members monitoring the situation) feel a page has changed enough that none
of the BY-NC-SA contributions remain, or that all previous contributors to
page have agreed to offer past contributions under BY-SA (ie, this and the
next item together).

3. We ask ever contributor to the wiki to release their contributions to the
> new license. This can be problematic because some contributors have left the
> project and have not responded to recent queries.
>
> 4. Same as #3, but we put a deadline, and if anyone does not respond by the
> reasonably-long deadline (say one month), then they automatically consent to
> the port. Note that this is a very common governance mechanism used within
> our project (that is, when we have a consensus, we allow a time for dissent,
> and if there is none, we declare approval).
>
> Can anyone comment on any of this and how we can most easily proceed?
> Clearly #3 would work, but it is also the most laborious and difficult. #1
> or #4 would be the easiest practically to do, but I'm unclear on the
> legality, or what happens if it is not considered legal, since we aren't
> incorporated or localized. If the consequence is just one of opening us (or
> me personally?) to a lawsuit, then wouldn't the plaintiff have to show that
> they were somehow harmed?
>
>
I can't comment on the legal details, but using existing community processes
is always a plus. The closest relicensing project I can recall is
Wikitravel's upgrade from BY-SA 1.0 to BY-SA 3.0. The former did not allow
adaptations of a work to be released under a later version, so they were
stuck at 1.0, without getting agreement, from all contributors in theory, to
change to 3.0. If I recall correctly, they took an approach similar to #4,
though over a longer time period and with lots of public discussion. I
haven't looked in awhile, see http://wikitravel.org/en/License_upgrade

Not a lawyer,
Mike

-- 
https://creativecommons.net/ml
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