[okfn-discuss] Problems of nomenclature

Mon Mar 12 11:28:55 UTC 2012

A few comments interspersed below.

On 9 March 2012 16:25, Chris Sakkas <sanglorian at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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'.

How about simply "commons 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').

My understanding is that "what is currently called libre open access"
includes a gratis requirement and the removal of one or more (but not
all) permissions. Assuming the gratis _requirement_ is dropped, my
preference would be for:

"shareable works licence"

or perhaps just "commons licence" - more concise and ok

(for me not a strong preference between these two).

> 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.

Agreed - "share-alike"  obviates the need for "copyleft-like".

> 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’.

Or possibly just "shareable access" journals?

>> 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!

That is why I wrote "would have" and offered alternatives.

Let's keep "libre" true to its roots:

Libre is a loan word in English borrowed from various Romance
languages, including Spanish and French. As in these languages,
"libre" in English denotes "the state of being free", as in "having
freedom" or "liberty".

It simply means "free as in freedom" and not "free as in free of
charge". Wherever clarity is required between "free/libre" and
"free/gratis", just say "libre" which also has a precise meaning in
this context ( http://wikieducator.org/Say_Libre ).

> 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.

Ok.

> 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.

I will take a look and try to help on Wikipedia.

>> 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’.

It will be interesting to see how the Open Access community
disentangles and separates the freedom and price issues. I hope they
succeed.

>>
>> 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)).

I agree that "all rights reserved" works are non-libre.
When I see "some rights reserved" I think of ALL the Creative Commons licences.
See the "some rights reserved" button on this page:
http://creativecommons.org/about/downloads/

In my understanding, by using a Creative Commons licence, one is
waving certain rights explicitly but not all other rights (such as
moral rights).
When discussing libre resources/works (freedom), the focus is on the
users as potential [collaborating co-] producers.
The main problem for me is your use of the word 'semi-libre' - which I
do not use at all, since to me, in this context, the definition of
libre is clear.

>>
>> 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.

As above, "some rights reserved" covers all the Creative Commons licences.

> (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’)

If I understand you correctly and by

"[some rights reserved but not libre] category"

you mean "non-libre excluding all rights reserved resources", then I
would call those something like

"non-libre commons licences" or "non-libre shareable works" etc.

> 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.

Yes, "share-alike" works for me as does "shareable works" and I could
live with "commons content".

Thanks for your efforts on this.

> Chris Sakkas
> Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki and the Living Libre blog and microblog.
>
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