(IANAL, and the views expressed are my own, not those of the OKF, etc.) As far as I understand the OKF's remit is in promoting 'open knowledge' as defined in the Open Knowledge Definition:
http://opendefinition.org/ This happens not to include NC licenses, just like the Open Source and Free Software Definitions don't include NC licenses. This is not to say that we are 'telling other people what to do' - just that we are in the business of promoting 'open' material in accordance to the OKD. We are (unlike Creative Commons) not primarily about 'licensing choice'. For example, we don't promote 'no-derivs' type licenses. But nor do we say (on moral, religious or other grounds) that people shouldn't use such licenses. Its simply not part of our sphere of activity. A separate issue is *why* it is the case that the OKF's sphere of activity is so defined. There are a bunch of reasons here, and perhaps it might be a good idea for us to separate them out and articulate them better. As far as I understand many of the main reasons are not 'ideological' but deeply practical. I think many people in the open knowledge/open data community are interested in a single commons that doesn't discriminate against certain types of reuse (commercial, extra-educational, etc.). There are issues with interoperability, issues with transaction costs and so on. Some of these things were articulated recently in a talk by Patrick Peiffer in relation to bibliographic metadata: http://blog.okfn.org/2010/02/03/7th-communia-workshop-luxembourg/ To employ a couple of metaphors: * There are industrial standards to make bits of machinery fit together - these do not prevent anyone from making bits of machinery which aren't standards compliant. These standards are not necessarily ideological. * Would you rail against a vegetarian restaurant for not serving meat? Not all vegetarian restaurants serve vegetarian food for the same reasons. All the best, Jonathan On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 8:14 PM, SteveC <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Feb 10, 2010, at 11:05 PM, Hamish wrote: > >>> That menu has to include attribution, share alike and NC. >> >> >> >> I think this thread is going nowhere fast, so I'll try to let it >> die, but I'd would like to point out a couple of things. >> >> >> - non-commercial-use licenses are pretty much useless for the >> academic world. > > And it's exactly that kind of small-minded thinking that's holding everything > up. There are plenty of people for which NC *is* very useful and you guys are > missing out on a far bigger prize of having a license menu by holding on to > your positions of what people 'should' be allowed to do, like you're > legislators or something. Remember - the ODbL would never have happened if we > didn't have the courage and drive to ignore the Science Commons folks. I > think the next steps to put this together will require similar effort. > > Yours &c. > > Steve_______________________________________________ > Geodata mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/geodata > -- Jonathan Gray Community Coordinator The Open Knowledge Foundation http://blog.okfn.org Twitter/Identica: jwyg _______________________________________________ geo-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/geo-discuss
