Discussions > Choosing the right license ... further comments
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Wayne Mackintosh
442 days ago |
Stephen Downes wrote:
There are many people who wish to use different licences for OERs, specifically, By-NC-SA. ... Large portions of OER are already NC and it creates a needless schism in the community to try to force people to allow commercial exploitation of their contributions.
Stephen, I agree. An international forum like this should not be about debates on licensing preferences. Certainly a worthy topic of discussion, but should not be a barrier which creates a shism in the community.
In this regard, perphaps the best alternative is to adopt a default CC-BY license with the option for users to license under their preferred alternative. In this way:
- Substantive posts under the default license can be relicensed and reused by those with a preference for the copyleft and/or NC restriction.
- Contributors still have the option to specify their preferred license.
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Abel Caine
442 days ago |
@ Wayne - I believe the UNESCO OER Community 'is' the best international forum for spontaneous, lively, yet respectful debate and discussions on all things OER. We closed the previous discussions on this issue because of the weekend disruption. I'll be copying the content of all 7 posts acros shortly.
@ Stephen, clarification please, if the UNESCO OER Community carries a CC BY SA license with the 'Except' clause, doesn't that allow a member to confidently contribute and clearly label an item or material that is CC BY-SA-NC or any other type of license and expect their terms to be respected by all members?
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Wayne Mackintosh
442 days ago |
Hi Abel,
I figured the previous thread was "closed" because of the technical issue over the weekend.
I can't speak for Stephen but know he feels strongly about the NC provision. Reflecting on this discussion, it would be fair to say that there are a number of OER practitioners who are also critical of the copyleft (SA) provision. Therefore, it will be difficult for proponents of the CC-BY to relicense and reuse contributions under the default license which carries SA provision given the viral nature of the clause.
The proposed policy does provide sufficient flexibility for contributors to choose their license given the "except for clause". The real issue is reuse. For example, let's say a proponent of CC-BY licesning is developing a course on OER and would like to develop a case study reusing extracts from UNESCO OER community forum discussions in the course materials with attribution -- with a SA or NC default license they would not be able to do so, as the derivative work will need to adhere to the provisions of the original license.
It seems to me that CC-BY would provide the greatest flexibility for the community, while respecting individual choices irrespective of which side of the free cultural works licensing fence folk prefer to sit.
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Abel Caine
442 days ago |
While I've always found the Creative Commons website to be extremely useful with explaining the different CC licenses, I wish there were good examples of who used particular licenses and why. Their page at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ only cites Wikipedia as an example for CC BY SA.
I understand the frustration of a CC BY proponent not being able to re-use other types of licensed materials and keep the CC BY license, but I guess it's a matter of persuading creators to move more and more to CC BY and to build better search engines to find items by specific CC license.
For example, for our publications, I find it frustrating not being able to easily find specific images that are CC licensed, and now I guess, to ensure I'm not violating licenses, I'd have to specifically search for appropriate images that specifically CC BY licensed.
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Wayne Mackintosh
441 days ago |
Hi Abel,
Creative Commons provide the legal tools for choosing a range of licenses. As an agency, they would not typically advise on individual license choices acknowledging and respecting freedom of choice. While not conlclusive in any way, the following will give an idea of the choices of licenses in the OER space:
- Connexions -- CC-BY (Free cultural works approved)
- Mediawiki family, eg Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity. --- Default license is CC-BY-SA (Free cultural works approved) with WikiNews using a CC-BY license. Media on the commons comprises a variety. CC-BY, GNU-FDL (dual licensed with CC-BY-SA) plus public domain
- WikiEducator (CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC0 and PD) - Free cultural works approved.
- The majority of OCW sites include the NC restriction - -but there are exceptions. Not free cultural works approved.
- OpenLearn -- uses CC-BY-NC-SA - Not free cultural works approved.
Remixing licenses can also be complicated for newbies - -see for example our upcoming course on Open Content Licensing for Educators.
The rationales underpinning licensing are driven by a diverse set of values and ultimately the choice depends on the core value set and intentions of the creator.
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Sanjaya Mishra
439 days ago |
Dear Wayne and Abel,
I am sure you have come accross the newly launched OpenAttribute to help privide appropriate attribution to CC-licence works.
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Vivek
437 days ago |
Dear Sanjaya, Wayne and Abel,
I have seen the different CC types, copyleft and some modified options. NC (non commercial), ND (no derivatives) type licenses will be difficult to use. Consider a situation: teacher wants to use an OER on her website, website has say adsense running or contains some other form of advertising, uses the OER in combination with her virtual classroom/LMS or derives lessons for the LMS from the OER - this will not be permitted under CC. We want teachers to use OER as much as they can, but licensing will hold us back.
I can propose two probable solutions:
One, develop and use some sort of EDU licensing weather using CC platform or some other form (some material has been licensed for free use in education), a definite licensing scheme has to be developed, for use in education.
Second, we can have (copyrighted) material, licensed to private parties for a fee! With a condition that the price of the so produced material should not be more than say - one hundredth of the license fee paid. You are free to get a license for $1.00 or you could quote $1000. There should not be exclusive licensing or region allotment. This would ensure competition among sellers. You are free to create derivatives e. g. a teacher/school wants to adopt a book, it can, and then modify it according to need.
I have not studied the models developed by the open software. How are they successfully distributing software and under what conditions/ licensing? I have used some software which encourage you to make copies of it and distribute!
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Wayne Mackintosh
437 days ago |
Hi Vivek,
I agree with your point about maximising the freedom of materials -- Educators can always dedicate their works to the public domain -- where all intellectual propery rights are removed.
Creative Commons provide 6 different licenses -- and a number cover the permissions you recommend. The trouble with introducing new licenses relates to compatibility between license types when creating derivative works, which is why we need a licensing framework with interoperable licenses. Creative commons provides this framework. I think we have a bigger challenge -- namely educating users on the different licensing options.
We are making a humble start -- with UNESCO support, we are hosting an online workshop on copyright, OER and creative commons licensing - 21 -25 March.
Hope you can join us and spread the word among colleauges. You can register here:
http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About
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Timothy Vollmer
435 days ago |
@ Abel WRT "I wish there were good examples of who used particular licenses and why." I generally agree. The CC wiki does include case studies, and some include information on license usage and license motivation, etc. And I think you already mentioned the P2PU page that links to information on their their deliberations/motivations in license choice.
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