[okfn-discuss] Problems of nomenclature

Fri Mar 9 15:25:17 UTC 2012

Hi folks,

 Kim's suggested three terms for some rights reserved licences,
specifically those that allow a work to - at a minimum - be shared verbatim
by any person for any noncommercial purpose. They are 'shareable works
licences’, ‘shareable content licences’ and ‘shareable resource licences’.
My suggestion, via David Hirst, is 'commons content licences'.

Do we have strong opinions either way on these? Both as descriptions for
public copyright licences and as adjectives to be applied to what is
currently libre open access ('shareable access' or 'shareable open access'
or 'commons access' or 'commons open access').

*Rob: *

 The Open Data Handbook says that 'share-alike' is broader than copyleft?
>
> This sounds...interesting...
>
 Maybe a better way of putting it is that it is deeper but not broader:
it’s my impression that all copyleft would be considered share-alike libre
and all share-alike libre would be considered copyleft, but that
share-alike would include non-libre resources with ‘copyleft-like’
provisions.

 *Kim:*

 Then perhaps: "share-alike licences".
>
 Yeah, I think this is the best option and it’s the one I’ve settled on.

Is there a term for ‘libre and semi-libre’ that we can use instead of ‘open
> content’?
>
> Perhaps "shareable works",

 Great minds think alike! ‘Shareable open access’ was one of the terms I
suggested to Peter Suber to replace ‘libre open access’.

I am not so anti the category "open content licences". Historically, most
> of the first educational institutions to share learning resources and
> publications on the Internet used non-libre licences (e.g. for
> non-commercial / educational use only). Use of licences with such
> restrictions in the open education community and for open access journals
> etc. is still significant. It would not be right (imo) to nominally exclude
> them as members of the open education community when many institutions do
> not share at all. The OER community for example has been successful in
> convincing some such institutions to drop their NC and ND restrictions by
> welcoming them into the OER community and educating them about "openness".
>
> Personally, I would have preferred "open" to remain the broad and
> inclusive term covering the libre and other "some rights reserved"
> categories, with "libre" being used to mean free as in freedom […]
>

With the OKFN’s open definition being one of the leading free, libre and
open definitions available on the web, I’d be reluctant to encourage the
adulteration of the term ‘open content’. I think this is particularly true
since ‘open’ comes through ‘open source’ just as ‘free’ comes through ‘free
software’, and to adulterate one would be as bad as adulterating the other!

 Thanks for the link to the FSF’s comments on the term ‘content’. I think
their case here is weaker than for IP, and as I mentioned above I’m not
convinced by that one either. I don’t think makes works sound like
commodities. I feel it’s a fairly neutral term.

 However, ‘resource’ is a good term to describe the supercategory of FLO
content/cultural works and FLOSS, since ‘free content’ etc. are often used
to exclude software (and I suspect hardware too, although that’s rarely
explicitly stated). I’ll edit the Wikipedia draft libre article to use
that. It’s true it could imply rivalrousness, but only weakly.

Is there a neutral term for libre and semi-libre viral licences?
>
> Which of the following do you mean? [the CC case in square brackets]
>
> A. (libre) and (semi-libre viral licences) [(cc-by, cc-by-sa) and
> (cc-by-nc-sa)] or B. (libre and semi-libre) viral licences [(cc-by-sa and
> cc-by-nc-sa)]?
>
The latter. You can see the fruits of my labours in the Share-alike article
on Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share-alike)

> One problem I see is that he did not separate the issues of freedom and
> price - defining "libre" to include "gratis"[.]
>
Open access, at least as I understand it and as it is defined on Wikipedia,
is necessarily gratis. Peter’s categories could also be described as ‘just
gratis open access’ and ‘also libre open access’.

> BC Peter Suber to offer the option to join the list and the discussion
> [...]
>
I’ve been in touch with Peter to discuss these issues, and he’s sent me an
email explaining his position. He’s given me permission to pass it on to
other people – email me privately if you’d like a copy.

> I suspect that what you think of as semi-libre I think of as non-libre on
> account of one or more restrictions (NC, ND, education only, ...).
>

I think that’s probably the case. It seems you’re using ‘non-libre’ to mean
(some rights reserved + not libre)? If that’s the case, that could explain
some of the confusion we’ve had. I use ‘non-libre’ to mean (all rights
reserved + (some rights reserved + not libre)).

> Others have contributed some great ideas already, some of which might
> cover this?
>
Unfortunately, I think all the ideas so far have been for a ‘some rights
reserved’ supercategory, not for the non-libre parts of that some rights
reserved supercategory. If I’ve missed a suggestion, I apologise – please
let me know.

(Perhaps another way of putting it, using your fruit analogy: we’ve had a
couple of suggestions for a ‘fruit’ [some rights reserved] category that I
like (‘commons content’ and ‘shareable resources’) and of course we know
the ‘oranges’ [libre] category, but there’s been no suggestion for the
‘apples’ [some rights reserved but not libre] category, other than the
contentious ‘semi-libre’ and ‘pseudo-libre’)
Hopefully that clears things up and contributes to the discussion. This
conversation has helped me sort out 'share-alike' already, and I think with
some luck we could get 'libre open access' and 'shareable/commons content'
worked out too.

*Chris Sakkas
**Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki <http://fossilbank.wikidot.com/> and the
Living Libre blog and microblog <https://twitter.com/#%21/living_libre>.*
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