[okfn-discuss] Problems of nomenclature

Sun Mar 4 11:33:27 UTC 2012

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Chris Sakkas <sanglorian at gmail.com> wrote:

> As Mike mentioned, I’ve changed my application to ‘Public copyright
> licenses’ and it’d be great to have your support over at Wikipedia
> (although it doesn’t seem to be controversial). Does anyone know how long
> the voting process takes, and whether I need to make the change myself or
> if an admin will do it?
>
>  *Mike: *
>
>  I sent an email to Peter Suber yesterday mentioning that ‘libre OA’ is
> inaccurate and wondering if he’d be prepared to change it.
>

I have copied him into my latest post.

>  *Peter:*
>
>  What do you think about the term ‘commons open access’ for works where
> some permissions have been granted? Then ‘libre OA’ could be reclaimed for
> truly free and open works.
>
>
> Answering several points. We have a very difficult challenge. In essence:

   - most people don't know there is an issue
   - most of those that know don't care
   - People use common English words and these accidentally or deliberately
   get used in a wide range of incompatible ways.
   - Precision is critical. It may come up in court, and it is one of the
   few tools we have have for constructive discourse.
   - It is hard to create precision. Licences are precise and can take
   years to create. Home-brewed protocols and licences are often flawed

So I don't care what words are used as long as there is a clear unambiguous
agreement as to what they mean. We use "CC-BY" - there is no ambiguity. We
use Panton Principles. There is no ambiguity. I wish Libre were unambiguous
but it isn't.

The only solution is to either re-use words which are well defined (and I
am struggling to find any) or to create one's own AND create a definition.
It is very dangerous to use common English words and that's why "libre" is
potentially so valuable and why it is such a problem if it is devalued.

My own preference is for clear acronyms pointing to clear definitions:
CC-BY (NOT "Creative Commons" which is almost meaningless operationally),
BOAI, or BBB. Panton Principles. Open Bibliographic Principles.

The OSI (software, not OSF) solve this by having an organization which
collates and approves F/OSS licences.

*The OSI are the stewards of the Open Source Definition
(OSD)<http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd>and the community-recognized
body for reviewing and approving licenses as
OSD-conformant.*

This is ideal. We know what we are talking about when we say "Apache 2.0",
"GPL", "copyleft", in the OSI context. Unfortunately the OA community has
remained completely uninterested in such an organization for OA.  I have
rasied this problem consistently over the last 10 years and been dismissed
as low priority. Richard Poynder agrees on the need for it but thinks it's
too late to make happen. So it costs us billions (sic) in restricted
access, high costs, lost value.

The OKF has done this successfully for knowledge in general. I tend to say
OKD-Open frequently (I try never to say "open" except in an OKF context
where everyone understands. I don't think the OKF should enter the morass
of OA at the moment, but make sure that other areas do not suffer the same
fate.

> Thanks for the discussion folks,
>
> And thanks to you. This is not easy or quick.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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