Thanks Erik and Richard, Richard has raised the issue of people copyrighting forms and other derived works based on archetypes and perhaps claiming these cannot be copied. This seems to be an argument in favour of SA...
Perhaps I could state what I personally see as the ideal state of archetypes: 1) That there is a community commitment to develop a shared set of archetypes as well as detailed and summary display scripts (including transforms to and from HL7 CDA, v2, CCR etc) which are freely available. 2) That these archetypes can be specialised for local use but that these specialisations, should they be published, remain freely available to others and under copyright of the openEHR Foundation so that other people can specialise them further if appropriate. 3) That as many archetypes are copyright openEHR Foundation as possible to simplify the management of access and change, and certainly any released on the openEHR CKM. 4) That repositories for archetypes are federated to allow searching and that specialisation is possible for any one searching these without seeking permission from anyone (ie federated CKMs, national etc, use openEHR copyright and licenses). 5) That no one using archetypes could be accused of copying someone else's forms or screen rendering based on archetypes. So the tension here is between companies using archetypes being able to secure their investment in the software they produce and no one feeling threatened to use archetypes in their system. I must say, after reading Richard's post that I do think that the SA has advantages in not leading to legal issues when companies use archetypes. More on Eric's comments. > Sam, what matters here is not what _you_ think would be OK, but what > the license says if somebody wants to go to court e.g. to create > trouble for a competitor, and how that potentially scares > people/organisations away from using openEHR-hosted archetypes and > might instead build momentum for an alternative archetype community > using licenses that allow more freedoms. I agree. > > If we want to use a simple well known CC-license, then CC-BY, (or > possibly CC-0, http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0) would avoid these > issues. But the interesting thing here is probably not to make a list > of potential problems, but instead to see if there really are any real > benefits of a CC-BY-SA requirement that can't be met by just using > e.g. CC-BY. > If you select CC-BY you can still require that any specialised or > adapted archetypes _hosted_ by openEHR should be free under CC-BY. Well, what if the specialised archetype is hosted in Brazil for instance. What if you receive data from there? > Exchanging archetype based health data between organisations is pretty > pointless if you don't share the archetypes somehow, so I don't quite > see the driving force for organisations _not_ to use CC-BY for > archetypes used in data that they want to exchange with others. I think this needs to be explicit - you can use the data and archetypes. (For > commercial clinical trials there may be a case for secret/private > archetypes during the trial though since the archetype may reveal > things about the trial structure. Do we really want to forbid these to > in some cases be be specialisations of openEHR-hosted archetypes?) Surely the data is what must be secret, but if the archetypes are not published anywhere then I agree it would not be an issue. > <sam.heard at oceaninformatics.com> wrote: > > As a director of the openEHR Foundation, I am concerned that we > > do not set up a situation where people merely collect or make minor > > adaptations of an archetype and make it commercially available. > > Sam could you clarify: Do you mean that your main worry is that you > are afraid that somebody will take CC-BY-licensed archetypes from the > openEHR-hosted repository, modify them a bit, and then redistribute > under a less free license and start charging for it? Or do you have > any other concerns that you can clarify? Yes > Won't your feared modified redistribution only be a problem to > interoperability if, all the following comes true: > a) If users will really consider the "commercial" versions to be a lot > better than the openEHR-hosted versions and are willing to pay for > something they used to get for free. The point is the collective investment in archetypes will be massive. How do we deal with the situation where someone creates a good archetype as a base idea and posts it on openEHR. Then someone specialises it quickly on the web and copyrights the archetype saying this is their archetype and no one else can make one like that? As someone said earlier on the list - these are all our collective ideas and it is inappropriate for anyone to claim them. But we have to have a collective governance structure that works and supports the processes that support communication of health records. > b) If the adaptations, if found useful by openEHR, are of such > innovation height that the modifying company can claim > copyright/patent on the changes and somehow block openEHR from > incorporating similar features in their revised archetype versions. Again, it might be quite small and malicious. > c) If national programmes/authorities etc. will start telling people > to use the "commercial" versions instead of the openEHR ones for > national exchange use. (Or more likely they would start their own > repository for international archetypes under e.g. OHT or some other > organisation.) This scenario does not bother me really for the reason's you put in brackets). There could be two sites for archetypes but sharing a single core set is likely to remain attractive. > d) If the really valuable clinical community creating and maintaining > archetypes etc. stop supporting the work in the openEHR repository in > favour of other alternatives. Again, this is not of great concern to me. I am happy not to protect for this as the clinical community has to go where it thinks is best. > > I think c and d would only happen if openEHR messes up their > governance and/or community support, and if that is the case, then it > is actually a good thing that the community, using CC-BY, can take the > archetype collection and keep innovating elsewhere. I agree. > CC-BY might > actually pressure the openEHR foundation to do a better job than if > feeling too "safe" behind CC-BY-SA. (No matter what you think of > Google, have a look at their Data Liberation Front > http://www.dataliberation.org/ ) I think it is the participants and the users that need to feel safe. > The more formal power you try to cling on to, the more informal power > you risk to lose. > I hope my ambition is for people to share health records. Having worked on the technical side for some time I believe the it is the community of clinicians and software companies that should answer this question to everyone's satisfaction. I am sure that clinicians will want their work to remain freely available and not to lead to any wars between implementing companies. As a company CEO I want to make sure I can create forms and other derived works from archetypes and no-one can sue me for look and feel software. I appreciate people sharing their ideas. It is on the basis of these sorts of inputs that we need to make a decision. Cheers, Sam > On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 16:35, Richard Dixon Hughes <richard at dh4.com.au> > wrote: > > In any case, there is a delicate balance and tension in the open > > source licensing that allows vendors to use archetypes in commercial > > products (expanding the appeal of openEHR) as against ensuring that > > work contributed to the common good remains freely available to all > > (ensuring ongoing community of interest support). > > Yes, this is the core of the problem. Will a SA-requirement really be > necessary to keep the community interested? I believe not. > > Today the situation of the archetype development in the (closed > source, Ocean created CKM tool) at http://openehr.org/knowledge/ is > only marked "copyright (c) 2009 openEHR Foundation", so legally it > seems like we don't know if those archetypes can be used in any system > without explicit permission from the openEHR Foundation, the > foundation is also of course now free to upon request grant permission > to any commercial or derivative use of the current archetypes. Still > people are happily engaged in the work, there is some kind of > community trust, which is a nice thing. Some companies with close > connections to the foundation also seem to be comfortable with using > these archetypes within their products and services, nice for them. I > believe this proves that there might be an interested community even > under very unclear licensing conditions and that they don't seem to > mind if their contributions may be used commercially without a licence > guarantee demanding derivative works also to be open. The observation > can of course also be used to prove that they might accept > contributing to something that they don't know if they can use in > non-SA-like systems themselves later if the foundation would elect to > use SA. > > The private contributions from people using their un-paid spare time > to help openEHR are wonderful, let's do all we can to encourage it > that continue. I also believe more health professionals will be > allowed to engage in archetype authoring on paid work time once > openEHR's importance starts to increase. One of the best things that > can happen to an open source software project is that some powerful > entities start investing engagement an developer time in the project, > that happens today also in openEHR (sometimes indirectly) where e.g. > state-run agencies have paid consultancy and research to the people > doing a lot of the openEHR specification work and > validation/implementation (e.g. through Ocean Informatics and academic > research institutions). It will be wise to keep those state & > commercial payers/players happy and assured that they and all their > subcontractors can use the time/money/engagement invested in openEHR > without any additional legal hassle and special permissions from the > openEHR foundation board. > > On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 14:29, Stefan Sauermann > <sauermann at technikum-wien.at> wrote: > > The target is to keep archetypes available for free. And to put them > > under a strict management. > >... > > Developers might be charged a small licensing fee, similar to what > you > > pay when you buy a standard from IEEE or CEN or ISO. > > Stefan, I and many others believe licensing fees for standards are > counterproductive. It would be better to charge for voluntary > certification that proves if products adhere to standards, in case you > need additional ways to make money. I am glad licensing fees have not > been suggested by the openEHR foundation. And what would the process > be, would it be as for standards documents, no access to > documents/archetypes before payment? > > Best regards, > Erik Sundvall > erik.sundvall at liu.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: +46-13-286733 > (Mail & tel. recently changed, so please update your contact lists.) > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
