Hi All, I have added the following to the Wiki. Thanks to Eric for the excellent summary. My personal concerns are best expressed in the following way:
* openEHR archetypes express (and may refine) clinical knowledge in widespread use * The openEHR specifications mean that sharing of archetypes is the basis for interoperability, the fundamental motivation for this work. Ensuring that archetypes derived from shared archetypes are also freely available seems a sensible approach to avoid any licensing issues for archetypes in use * CC-BY-SA is more restrictive than CC-BY and a shift from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY is far less problematic than moving from CC-BY to CC-BY-SA * Eric may be correct that specific provisions are not easy to express. By limiting the derived works to which this license applies to openEHR archetypes and templates would appear to avoid this issue. I wonder if there are others who have an opinion in this delicate decision. It would be good to have legal advice on what we would have to do if under CC-BY I issued a specialised archetype under my own copyright. I believe that I would have the right to provide formal agreement to anyone who wanted to specialise it further. Cheers, Sam From: [email protected] [mailto:openehr-clinical-bounces at openehr.org] On Behalf Of Stef Verlinden Sent: Wednesday, 2 June 2010 9:35 PM To: For openEHR clinical discussions Subject: Re: [openEHR-announce] Message from the Board - openEHR Intellectual Property For those of you who really want to dig deep into this, here (https://oa.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/42778/isbn9789522147219.pdf?sequ ence=2) you'll find an excellent thesis dealing with all aspects of CC licenses. Although initially I voted for CC-BY-SA I have to agree that, although I still like the idea of reciprocity, it shouldn't become a barrier for wide adaptation and/or a 'paper tiger (as we call it in Dutch, which means that although it looks something, it's worth nothing). Therefore I also think we should go for CC-BY Underneath you'll find a small section of the thesis dealing with the SA aspect. Cheer, Stef --------------- 2.4.6 ShareAlike The term Copyleft is a play on the word ?copyright? and refers to the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.291 CC?s licenses that include ShareAlike [SA] element are considered to be copyleft licenses. The central clause of the license is: ?You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; The substantive implication of internationalization is that different language ver- sions provide limited interchange in ShareAlike licenses: ? (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdic- tion license (either this or a later license version) that con- tains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attri- bution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License.? The problem with the future media formats described previously is not the only ?future problem? that CC licenses have. The licenses also include a clause that makes the licenses compatible with future license versions. It is questionable how a licensor can grant permission to license the adaptations with later versions of licenses that do not yet exist. At least new license terms that would change the original license considerably would invalidate the future license compatibility clause. The same would apply to other jurisdiction versions and to CC compati- ble licenses if they considerably change the purpose of the original license grant. Even though ShareAlike licenses provide some interoperability between dif- ferent license versions, mixing NC licensed content with a more liberal BY-SA license is not possible. This is because the SA license requires that the entire work be licensed with the same SA license.292 Erik M?ller argues that using ShareAlike licenses would provide benefits compared to NC licenses that leave a lot of room for interpretation.293 M?ller?s argument is that companies would not exploit the works because SA licenses re- quire any work derived from the original to be made available as free content, as a whole. This would provide protection against large-scale exploitation because most of the commercial users would not be willing to share their works with SA licenses.294 Op 2 jun 2010, om 12:15 heeft Erik Sundvall het volgende geschreven: Hi David and others! I have added a section for summaries of discussions to the bottom of the page at http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+IP+License+Revision+Propos al The current version of the text is also included below: Summary of views by Erik Sundvall (preferring CC-BY) There has been mail discussions on (and off) the mailinglists regarding what license to use for content models (exemplified above by openEHR.org archetypes, templates, archetype-based queries).The concrete suggestion from the openEHR foundation board is tu use CC-BY-SA with some homegrown additions. In my view the argument right now boils down to: * The main difference between CC-BY and CC-BY-SA is that CC-BY-SA in addition to the CC-BY also adds the requirement that derived works that are distributed must be distributed under an open license. The board now for some strange reason wants to use CC-BY-SA with a loosely formulated addition that derived works "do not have to be openly distributed". I have not heard any reasonable motivation what this would gain compared to just using CC-BY from the beginning. In open source communities homegrown additions to (or modifications of) licenses are known to be potential problem sources. CC-BY and CC-BY-SA (without homegrown additions) have been scrutinized by lawyers and have been translated and developed to fit legislation in many countries, it would take a lot of work to do the same with a homegrown addition to CC-BY-SA - and if there is no well motivated gain, then why not just use CC-BY in the first place? Some previous mailing list posts regarding this, commented from Erik's perspective: * January 2006 - The importance of having very well understood open licenses for archetypes was very well formulated by Tim Churches <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg01774.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg01774.html * 1 September 2009 - David Mon?r starts an interesting thread: <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04573.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04573.html Some excerpts from the discussion thread follow: * Tim Cook says the board should make a statement: <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04577.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04577.html * Erik Sundvall discusses hard-to-interpret situations if using SA and quotes himself from off-list discussions from 2008: <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04579.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04579.html * Sam Heard says -SA will "ensure that specialised or adapted archetypes based on openEHR archetypes remain freely available" and that other derived works won't be a big issue <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04622.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04622.html * Richard Dixon Hughes (a lawyer) says and exemplifies that derived works might be a tricky area <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04623.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04623.html * Erik Sundvall responds to Sam Heard, especially regarding the expressed fear of modified redistribution of archetypes: <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04624.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04624.html * Sam Heard responds to Erik Sundvall <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04628.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04628.html * Thomas Beale says copyright does not always have to be assigned to openEHR <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04632.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04632.html * Erik Sundvall finds Sam Heard's reasoning changing and contradictory, asks for clarification and responds to Sam's other points <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04631.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04631.html * Sam Heard explains parts of his thought process and then says things like "Your arguments for not using SA are well put" and "BY alone is clearly a choice, SA adds a major condition that we need to consider carefully." <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04639.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04639.html * The continued discussion then shifts focus away from Archetype licensing (to CKM and other things). * February 2010 - Erik repeats his fears that SA will hurt trust in openEHR: <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04892.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04892.html and a reply where Tom B finds the basic argument solid <http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04893.html> http://www.openehr.org/mailarchives/openehr-technical/msg04893.html The fact that objections to using CC-BY-SA were openly declared on the mailing lists, but not properly answered before the decision by the board to adopt CC-BY-SA, makes me wonder how the decisions in the board are made with respect to response from the community. In a (mostly off-list) mail debate from August 2008 and in the (on-list) debate from September 2009 (referenced above) I sensed that Sam Heard (who is <http://www.openehr.org/about/bod.html> part of the board) had some strong undefined feeling that CC-BY-SA would be more beneficial top the openEHR community, but he could not make a strong case for it when confronted. Is the case that Sam or somebody else has later presented strong arguments to the board that could not and will not be presented to the community in the mailinglists or on the wiki? If arguments can not be presented openly, then the risk increases that people suspect the board or some of its members to have hidden agendas, and that is a bad thing for an open project like openEHR. Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik.sundvall at liu.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: +46-13-286733 On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 15:40, Thomas Beale <thomas.beale at oceaninformatics.com> wrote: > > Posted on behalf of Professor David Ingram, chair of the board of the > openEHR Foundation: > > Since initiating the consultation on the principles governing present > and future licensing of openEHR IP (see wiki page > http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+IP+License+Revision+Propos al), > we have had positive responses, expressed on a personal basis. As the > Board needs to begin to act on these proposals, from the end of June, > this is a request to hear from anyone in the community who may be > harbouring doubts or concerns about the direction of travel we have laid > out, or wishes to offer alternative proposals. This can be by private > communication to me, as chair of the openEHR Foundation Board, or by > contribution to the openEHR lists and/or the above wiki page . We would > be happy to receive messages of support as well, of course. > > - David Ingram > > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-announce mailing list > openEHR-announce at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-announce > _______________________________________________ openEHR-clinical mailing list openEHR-clinical at openehr.org http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-clinical -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-clinical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20100603/4f76f05e/attachment.html>
