[okfn-discuss] Draft of 'Libre' Wikipedia page

Thu Mar 8 20:07:07 UTC 2012

Some remarks regarding the terminology.

There is no need to avoid the term intellectual property. To avoid a
commonly understood term is to introduce ambiguity. Even if you feel
that IP should not exist, or should be severely altered, you are doing
readers a disservice by avoiding it.

Secondly, saying something is "not proprietary" because something is
used for non-commercial uses or fits a particular definition of
openness is false. I know it is very common in the open source
software community to make a distinction between free software[*] and
proprietary software. However, free software is still owned by its
creators, or potentially its assignees, and thus still has a
proprietor. It is therefore proprietary. The only non-proprietary
works those are works in the public domain, precisely because they
have no owner.

I don't have much of a stake in the article, and am perfectly happy to
yield to others' editorial opinions on what services the readers best.

[*] Free in the rms sense.

On 9 March 2012 08:55, Chris Sakkas <sanglorian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks folks!
>
> Rob:
>
> I've kept OER and OA quarantined under the 'Related concepts' heading to
> make it clear that while there's overlap they're not libre
> in-and-of-themselves.
>
> I use 'proprietary' to mean 'non-libre', which would mean that NC and ND are
> proprietary - are you using a different definition?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
>
> Chris Sakkas
> Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki and the Living Libre blog and microblog.
>
>
>
> On 6 March 2012 00:00, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 05/03/12 09:37, Chris Sakkas wrote:
>> >
>> > But meanwhile I was inspired to return to a Wikipedia article I drafted
>> > last year: 'Libre'. I think libre warrants a separate article (It's
>> > currently at 'Gratis versus Libre'), and you can read what I've written
>> > so far at my sandbox page
>> > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sanglorian/sandbox)
>> >
>> > Feel free to contribute, either by editing my sandbox directly or by
>> > discussing the article on this mailing list.
>>
>> The article is very clearly written and well sourced.
>>
>> I agree that the term "intellectual property" should be avoided.
>>
>> Concepts that have been identified as potentially including non-free
>> works in this discussion (such as OA/OER/Open Content) should not be
>> included as sub-categories or types of Libre, which I would argue is
>> used specifically within discussion of Free Software as a synonym for
>> OSD-Free.
>>
>> NC/ND are not proprietary, they are non-free because they do not fit the
>> common definitions of "Free" or "Open" (FSD/DFSG/OSD/Freedom
>> Defined/Open Definition). Within the terms of reference of this
>> discussion they are non-libre public licenses.
>>
>> These comments aside I recognize the article's description of Libre from
>> my knoweldge of it, and the article has some very interesting references
>> of which I was previously not aware.
>>
>> - Rob.
>>
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>
>
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