subject:"\[Wikidata\] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC\-0"


Hi Leila,

First, thank you for your clear analyze and suggestions.

I won't respond extensively on list about this thread anymore for now.

So to your reply, I will just make a single point more clear, and take 
the rest in consideration off list.



Le 01/12/2017 à 22:49, Leila Zia a écrit :

(ii) I demand transparency: You need to answer my questions since
transparency is important for us and I have the right to ask about any
topic and demand more explanation until my satisfaction.
Once again, this is not about "I, me and my". Transparency is a core 
value of *our* Wikimedia movement. So the question is not to reach my 
satifaction, but the level of transparency which is expected in the 
Wikimedia movement.


As far as I'm aware, this level is nothing like "a right for any 
individual to ask full transparency on any topic at whichever level it 
wants". This is just broad unfair generalization of what I said. I never 
demanded such an extensive transparency level, and I actually would 
raise against such a demand more vigorously than what I'm doing here in 
favor of more transparency on a scoped issue.


My demand is on a scoped topic which, to my mind, is of deep importance 
for the general governance of the movement and its future as a whole. So 
if that is asking too much information, then yes it can be stated that I 
was wrong in my view regarding the expected level of transparency our 
community is demanding on its governance. Or maybe it's the importance 
of the topic and its impact that I'm miss-evaluating.


I recognize I'm all but perfect, I do mistakes, and the form of my 
message was a terrible one. Exaggeratedly generalized interpretation of 
a transparency demand is however not a proper way to discard the 
underlying issue.


But once again, this is the single point I wanted to makes things more 
clear, and the rest of Leila message seems full of good advises. So 
while I'm not going to make extensive laudatory comments on the reply, 
I'm not short of complimentary thoughts for the rest of it.


Kind regards,
mathieu
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-12-01 Thread Leila Zia

[I'm writing in my personal capacity.]

Hi Mathieu,

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 2:45 AM, mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

>
>
> Le 01/12/2017 à 09:34, Markus Kroetzsch a écrit :
>
> Dear Mathieu,
>
> You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective
> researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or you
> are pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of Wikidata.
> The way you do it, you are making yourself part of the debate that you
> claim you want to reconstruct.
>
> Well, I guess this is a dilemma that many sociologists and anthropologists
> have to deal with. That's a really hard epistemic problem you are raising
> here, and I don't think this list is the place to discuss it extensively.
> So to make it short, I fully agree that your concern is legitimate, but if
> your implied conclusion is that it would be better to do nothing rather
> than going into a difficult epistemic position, I don't share this
> conclusion.
>

You can do both, but these will be two separate efforts and you need to be
clear to your audience which hat you have on when you're writing your
messages. At the moment, the messages come across with mixed signals which
makes it really hard to understand what is your goal. FYI: Here is what I
have heard so far on this thread from you:
(i) I want to do research to understand how the decision about CC0 was made.
(ii) I demand transparency: You need to answer my questions since
transparency is important for us and I have the right to ask about any
topic and demand more explanation until my satisfaction.
(iii) I am pretty skeptical about the way CC0 was chosen as a license for
Wikidata, and I'm going to dig deep (casually, and not
methodically/systematically) to figure out what's going on.

If you're doing (i):
We count you as a researcher and you are asked to follow research norms. In
this case, I recommend that you open a research page on
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Index , clearly state what the
problem is, why it's important to solve it, what methods have been used in
the past (literature review) and why they are not enough, what is your
methodology, how are you planning to do data collection (for example, will
there be interviews? if yes, how are you going to handle the data
collected?), results (when they become available), discussion (how you do
or don't handle bias in data collection, where you think your study can be
improved, ...). Once you have that page up, others may join to help you
improve your research methodology and analysis before embarking on the
actual research.

If you're doing (ii):
Be aware: all of us have to make trade-offs between documentation, spending
time on building history, and getting the volunteer/staff work ahead of us
done. This is especially true for volunteer projects (which is how Wikidata
was initiated). Someone spending time on documentation may mean the project
not moving forward, literally. On this front: If you demand transparency
and you make documentation a requirement for transparency, you will likely
have to work hard to bring more volunteer resources to this community to
help us document better/more, and also work with us to create ways for
doing documentation without disrupting current workflows as much as
possible. This is a long-term discussion, it needs months/years of planning
and execution to expand a capacity that is heavily under-resourced in our
Movement.

If you're doing (iii):
I highly recommend that you start small, even more private, in the future.
You are exposing quite a few people. You will hurt them less (or not at
all) and still will learn over time. Only if you see strong reasons for
opening up things at the level of this mailing list, I suggest you embark
on journeys like the one you're on now.

I tend to agree with Markus that you are in a very difficult place now: you
have communicated mixed signals, some people are hurt, and you need to
spend a lot of time and resources on your end and theirs (if they're
willing to), to start from scratch. In practice, you may be better off
letting this conversation go and allowing others to pick it up and build it
on a clearer base.

Best,
Leila
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Le 01/12/2017 à 14:06, Federico Leva (Nemo) a écrit :

mathieu stumpf guntz, 01/12/2017 03:00:
Actually, as far as I know, CC-by-sa-3.0-undeed states nothing about 
/suis generis/ rights


I don't know what's -undeed, but 3.0-it and 4.0 do, which is for 
instance why ISTAT data can be imported in Wikidata despite the less 
than ideal license (CC-BY-3.0-it).


Federico
Sorry, I meant "unported", that is whith no specific claims about local 
juridiction. So, in a nutshell, ported versions of CC-3.0 of European 
countries such as Italy or France do include clauses related to /suis 
generis/ rights, while the unported version.


And to be complete "undeed" is the Creative Commons sobriquet for "full 
legal code", as opposed to the simple "deed" presentation for the layman:


   The Commons Deed is a handy reference for licensors and licensees,
   summarizing and expressing some of the most important terms and
   conditions. Think of the Commons Deed as a user-friendly interface
   to the Legal Code beneath, although the Deed itself is not a
   license, and its contents are not part of the Legal Code itself. 


   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Uncreatively,
mathieu
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-12-01 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


mathieu stumpf guntz, 01/12/2017 03:00:
Actually, as far as I know, CC-by-sa-3.0-undeed states nothing about 
/suis generis/ rights


I don't know what's -undeed, but 3.0-it and 4.0 do, which is for 
instance why ISTAT data can be imported in Wikidata despite the less 
than ideal license (CC-BY-3.0-it).


Federico

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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-12-01 Thread Luca Martinelli

2017-12-01 9:34 GMT+01:00 Markus Kroetzsch :
> Dear Mathieu,
>
> You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective
> researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or you are
> pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of Wikidata. The way
> you do it, you are making yourself part of the debate that you claim you
> want to reconstruct.
>
> From a research perspective, any material you gather in this way comes with
> a big question mark. You are not doing us much of a favour either, because
> by forcing us to refute accusations, you are placing our memories of the
> past events in a doubtful, heavily biased context.
>
> Your overall approach of considering a theory to be true (or at least
> equally likely to be true) unless you are given "proofs that this claim is
> completely wrong" is not scientific. This is not how research works. For a
> start, Occam's Razor should make you disregard overly complex theories for
> things that have much simpler explanations (in our case: CC0 is a respected
> license chosen by many other projects for good reasons, so it is entirely
> plausible that the founders of Wikidata also just picked it for the usual
> reasons, without any secret conspiracy). And once you have an interesting
> theory formed, you need to gather evidence for or against it in a way that
> is not affected by the theory (i.e., in particular, don't start calls for
> information with an emotional discussion of whether or not you would
> personally like the theory to turn out true).
>
> What you are doing here is completely unscientific and I hope that your
> supervisor (?) will also point this out to you at some point. Moreover, I am
> afraid that you cannot really get back to the position of an objective
> observer from where you are now. Better leave this research to others who
> are not in publicly documented disagreement with the main historic
> witnesses.
>
> So you should understand that I don't feel compelled to give you a detailed
> account of every Wikidata-related discussion I had as if I were on some
> trial here. As a "researcher", it is you who has to prove your theories, not
> the rest of the world who has to disprove them. I already told you that your
> main guesses as far as they concern things I have witnessed are not true,
> and that's all from me for now.

I agree wholeheartedly with Markus.

I'm sorry to be blunt, but it's been almost three days now and 40+
messages, and it seems that all the fundamental reasons for this
thread to be open are either too complicated to be implemented (or at
least "not worth the while") or inherently biased and/or unfounded.

For so, I kindly ask all people in this list to close this thread, as
it seems that nothing good will ever come out of it.

Thank you.

-- 
Luca "Sannita" Martinelli
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita

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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 01/12/2017 à 09:34, Markus Kroetzsch a écrit :

Dear Mathieu,

You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective 
researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or 
you are pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of 
Wikidata. The way you do it, you are making yourself part of the 
debate that you claim you want to reconstruct.
Well, I guess this is a dilemma that many sociologists and 
anthropologists have to deal with. That's a really hard epistemic 
problem you are raising here, and I don't think this list is the place 
to discuss it extensively. So to make it short, I fully agree that your 
concern is legitimate, but if your implied conclusion is that it would 
be better to do nothing rather than going into a difficult epistemic 
position, I don't share this conclusion. Also, to my mind belief in 
absolute objectiveness is only delusion. I prefer to expose clearly what 
I can myself identify as my starting point of view and let audience take 
my biases into account rather than pretending that I aim presenting the 
ultimate objective truth.


So I recognize I have a strong bias toward copyleft licenses as general 
solution. But as I already stated in this thread, I am also for 
promoting solutions with less legal constraints depending on the context 
of production and fixed goals. And this nothing new, I surely might be 
able to provide links or get some testimony that here and there I do 
promote and myself use solutions with less legal constraints.


For this project, believe it or not, I had no pre-established agenda to 
criticise and change Wikidata in a predetermined fashion as point of 
departure. Of course before starting this project I had an opinion, and 
yes CC0 for Wikidata didn't look appealing to me. But a strong 
motivation behind this project was to give me a chance to change my mind 
with a broader view of this choice of CC0 as unique license. Its origin, 
its impact, and opinion of the Wikimedia community regarding this topic. 
And I stay in this open minded dynamic.


Now while doing my research with this goal, I found strong hints of 
potential conflict of interest, which was absolutely not what I was 
looking for. Now strong hints and potential conflict of interest are not 
proof of conflict of interest. If there was no such a thing, then it's 
great and I'll document that in this way.


Finally note that while I'm taking part of the debate right now won't 
change the fact that I didn't at the moment that the decision was took. 
That is, I don't have the power to change the past, and I am aiming at 
documenting past events on the topic using verifiable available sources. 
I don't expect anyone to blindly trust me. Don't blindly trust me. 
Everybody should really interested in the subject should check sources 
on which claims are done and possibly draw a different conclusion and be 
bold and make evolve the project or at least provide feedback.
From a research perspective, any material you gather in this way comes 
with a big question mark. You are not doing us much of a favour 
either, because by forcing us to refute accusations, you are placing 
our memories of the past events in a doubtful, heavily biased context.
Well, I'm sorry for that. But it's not nothing new that our community is 
full of freaks obsessed with transparency, "respect the license" and 
"reference needed", is it? So how possibly it wasn't envisioned that one 
day it would be embarrassing to not have a documented information about 
how exactly was done this license choice and by who? My guess is that 
the simple answer is that human make errors. I do errors. A lot of it. 
Many reply in this thread surely can attest that, doesn't it? But may be 
it would be good to recognize that you too can make errors, rather than 
trying to put all the shame on me for asking information about such an 
important topic so many time after the decision occurred.
Your overall approach of considering a theory to be true (or at least 
equally likely to be true) unless you are given "proofs that this 
claim is completely wrong" is not scientific. 
Claiming that some approach is the one I'm following, discrediting this 
approach and conclude that anything I say is then wrong is not fair either.


Contemporary scientific method mostly agree that you have to come with a 
falsifiable theory, as exposed in by Thomas Kuhn in /The Structure of 
Scientific Revolutions/. So this is a condition to have any chance to 
have some scientific value. But of course this is not a guarantee that 
the theory is true. At best it makes the theory not proven wrong by any 
evidence.


This is not how research works. For a start, Occam's Razor should make 
you disregard overly complex theories for things that have much 
simpler explanations (in our case: CC0 is a respected license chosen 
by many other projects for good reasons, so it is entirely plausible 
that the founders of Wikidata also just pick

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-12-01 Thread Markus Kroetzsch


Dear Mathieu,

You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective 
researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or you 
are pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of Wikidata. 
The way you do it, you are making yourself part of the debate that you 
claim you want to reconstruct.


From a research perspective, any material you gather in this way comes 
with a big question mark. You are not doing us much of a favour either, 
because by forcing us to refute accusations, you are placing our 
memories of the past events in a doubtful, heavily biased context.


Your overall approach of considering a theory to be true (or at least 
equally likely to be true) unless you are given "proofs that this claim 
is completely wrong" is not scientific. This is not how research works. 
For a start, Occam's Razor should make you disregard overly complex 
theories for things that have much simpler explanations (in our case: 
CC0 is a respected license chosen by many other projects for good 
reasons, so it is entirely plausible that the founders of Wikidata also 
just picked it for the usual reasons, without any secret conspiracy). 
And once you have an interesting theory formed, you need to gather 
evidence for or against it in a way that is not affected by the theory 
(i.e., in particular, don't start calls for information with an 
emotional discussion of whether or not you would personally like the 
theory to turn out true).


What you are doing here is completely unscientific and I hope that your 
supervisor (?) will also point this out to you at some point. Moreover, 
I am afraid that you cannot really get back to the position of an 
objective observer from where you are now. Better leave this research to 
others who are not in publicly documented disagreement with the main 
historic witnesses.


So you should understand that I don't feel compelled to give you a 
detailed account of every Wikidata-related discussion I had as if I were 
on some trial here. As a "researcher", it is you who has to prove your 
theories, not the rest of the world who has to disprove them. I already 
told you that your main guesses as far as they concern things I have 
witnessed are not true, and that's all from me for now.


Kind regards,

Markus


On 01.12.2017 03:43, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:

Hello Markus,

First rest assured that any feedback provided will be integrated in the 
research project on the topic with proper references, including this 
email. It might not come before beginning of next week however, as I'm 
already more than fully booked until then. But once again it's on a 
wiki, be bold.


Le 01/12/2017 à 01:18, Markus Krötzsch a écrit :

Dear Mathieu,

Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first 
chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other claims 
here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already doing this, 
and I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.


Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his 
earlier message (quote included below this email for reference): it 
was not Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a 
discussion among several people who had worked with open data for some 
time before Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this choice 
and still do. I have never received any money directly or indirectly 
from Google, though -- full disclosure -- I got several T-shirts for 
supervising in Summer of Code projects.


Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that too, but to my mind the problem is 
not money but governance. Anyone with too much cash can throw it 
wherever wanted, and if some fall into Wikimedia pocket, that's fine.


But the moment a decision that impact so deeply Wikimedia governance and 
future happen, then maximum transparency must be present, communication 
must be extensive, and taking into account community feedback is 
extremely preferable. No one is perfect, myself included, so its all the 
more important to listen to external feedback. I said earlier that I 
found the knowledge engine was a good idea, but for what I red it seems 
that transparency didn't reach expectation of the community.


So, I was wrong my inferences around Denny, good news. Of course I would 
prefer to have other archived sources to confirm that. No mistrust 
intended, I think most of us are accustomed to put claims in perspective 
with sources and think critically.


For completeness, was this discussion online or – to bring bag the 
earlier stated testimony – around a pizza? If possible, could you 
provide a list of involved people? Did a single person took the final 
decision, or was it a show of hands, or some consensus emerged from 
discussion? Or maybe the community was consulted with a vote, and if 
yes, where can I find the archive?


Also archives show that lawyers were consulted on the topic, could we 
have a copy of their report?


At no time did Google or a

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

Le 01/12/2017 à 05:51, John Erling Blad a écrit :
My reference was to in-place discussions at WMDE, not the open
meetings with Markus. Each week we had an open demo where Markus
usually attended. As I remember the May-discussion, it was just a
discussion in the office, there was a reference to an earlier meeting.
It is although easy to mix up old memories, so what happen first and
what happen next should not be taken to be facts. If Markus also says
the same it is although a reasonable chance we have got it right.
It's perfectly understandable that human memory limits arise here, I was
expecting such a response. Are they some minutes of this meetings? No
blame if that's not the case, Wikimedia DE for what I found already
release a large set of archives, including the IRC logs of the open
meeting organized each weeks. Simply if there is no trace of this, it's
really unfortunate that considerations for such a crucial decision fell
in oblivion while so many log are available for far less important
points in term of governance.
As to the questions about archives on open discussions with the
community. This was in April-May 2012. There was no community, there
were only concerned individuals.
Just as a side note if it wasn't clear, by community, I was talking
about the Wikimedia community at large. And if I don't make the
precision, you can assume that it's how it is supposed to be denoted in
my sentences.
The community started to emerge in August with the first attempts to
go public. On Wikidata_talk:Introduction there are some posts from 15.
August 2012,[1] while first post on the subject page is from 30.
October. The stuff from before October comes from a copy-paste from
Meta.[3] Note that Denny writes "The data in Wikidata is published
under a free license, allowing the reuse of the data in many different
scenarios." but Whittylama changes this to "The data in Wikidata is
published under[http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/a
free license], allowing the reuse of the data in many different
scenarios.",[4] and at that point there were a community on an open
site and had been for a week. When Whittylama did his post it was the
4504th post on the site, so it was hardly the first! The license was
initially a CC-SA.[8] I'm not quite sure when it was changed to CC0 in
the footer,[9] but it seems to have happen before 31 October 2012, at
19:09. First post on Q1 is from 29. October 2012,[5] this is one of
several items updated this evening.

It is quite enlightening to start at oldid=1 [6] and stepping forward.
You will find that our present incarnation went live 25. October 2012.
So much for the "birthday". To ask for archived community discussions
before 25th October does not make sense, there were no site, and the
only people involved were mostly devs posting at Meta. Note for
example that the page Wikidata:Introduction is from Meta.[7]

Thank you for all this sourced informations.

[1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Introduction
[2]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Introduction&oldid=2677
[3]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata_talk:Introduction&diff=133569705&oldid=128154617
[4]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Introduction&diff=next&oldid=4504

[5] https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1&oldid=103
[6] https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?oldid=1
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata/Introduction&oldid=4030743
[8]
https://web.archive.org/web/20121027015501/http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
[9]
https://web.archive.org/web/20121102074347/http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page

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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

My reference was to in-place discussions at WMDE, not the open meetings
with Markus. Each week we had an open demo where Markus usually attended.
As I remember the May-discussion, it was just a discussion in the office,
there was a reference to an earlier meeting. It is although easy to mix up
old memories, so what happen first and what happen next should not be taken
to be facts. If Markus also says the same it is although a reasonable
chance we have got it right.

As to the questions about archives on open discussions with the community.
This was in April-May 2012. There was no community, there were only
concerned individuals. The community started to emerge in August with the
first attempts to go public. On Wikidata_talk:Introduction there are some
posts from 15. August 2012,[1] while first post on the subject page is from
30. October. The stuff from before October comes from a copy-paste from
Meta.[3] Note that Denny writes "The data in Wikidata is published under a
free license, allowing the reuse of the data in many different scenarios."
but Whittylama changes this to "The data in Wikidata is published under [
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ a free license], allowing
the reuse of the data in many different scenarios.",[4] and at that point
there were a community on an open site and had been for a week. When
Whittylama did his post it was the 4504th post on the site, so it was
hardly the first! The license was initially a CC-SA.[8] I'm not quite sure
when it was changed to CC0 in the footer,[9] but it seems to have happen
before 31 October 2012, at 19:09. First post on Q1 is from 29. October
2012,[5] this is one of several items updated this evening.

It is quite enlightening to start at oldid=1 [6] and stepping forward. You
will find that our present incarnation went live 25. October 2012. So much
for the "birthday". To ask for archived community discussions before 25th
October does not make sense, there were no site, and the only people
involved were mostly devs posting at Meta. Note for example that the page
Wikidata:Introduction is from Meta.[7]

[1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Introduction
[2]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Introduction&oldid=2677
[3]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata_talk:Introduction&diff=133569705&oldid=128154617
[4]
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Introduction&diff=next&oldid=4504
[5] https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1&oldid=103
[6] https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?oldid=1
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata/Introduction&oldid=4030743
[8]
https://web.archive.org/web/20121027015501/http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
[9]
https://web.archive.org/web/20121102074347/http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 1:18 AM, Markus Krötzsch <
mar...@semantic-mediawiki.org> wrote:

> Dear Mathieu,
>
> Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first chosen
> (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other claims here -- the
> discussions on the Wikidata list are already doing this, and I agree with
> Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.
>
> Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his earlier
> message (quote included below this email for reference): it was not Denny's
> decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a discussion among several
> people who had worked with open data for some time before Wikidata was
> born. I have personally supported this choice and still do. I have never
> received any money directly or indirectly from Google, though -- full
> disclosure -- I got several T-shirts for supervising in Summer of Code
> projects.
>
> At no time did Google or any other company take part in our discussions in
> the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they? From what I can see on
> their web page, Google has no problem with all kinds of different license
> terms in the data they display. Also, I can tell you that we would have
> reacted in a very allergic way to such attempts, so if any company had
> approached us, this would quite likely have backfired. But, believe it or
> not, when we started it was all but clear that this would become a relevant
> project at all, and no major company even cared to lobby us. It was still
> mostly a few hackers getting together in varying locations in Berlin. There
> was a lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in this early phase of Wikidata
> (well, I guess we are still in this phase).
>
> So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past events that
> you have not even been close to (calling something "research" is no
> substitute for methodology and rigour). Putting unsourced personal attacks
> against community members before all other arguments is a reckless way of
> maximising effect, and such rhetoric can damage our movement beyond this
> thread or topic. Our main strength is not our content but our communi

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Hello Markus,

First rest assured that any feedback provided will be integrated in the 
research project on the topic with proper references, including this 
email. It might not come before beginning of next week however, as I'm 
already more than fully booked until then. But once again it's on a 
wiki, be bold.


Le 01/12/2017 à 01:18, Markus Krötzsch a écrit :

Dear Mathieu,

Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first 
chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other claims 
here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already doing this, 
and I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.


Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his 
earlier message (quote included below this email for reference): it 
was not Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a 
discussion among several people who had worked with open data for some 
time before Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this choice 
and still do. I have never received any money directly or indirectly 
from Google, though -- full disclosure -- I got several T-shirts for 
supervising in Summer of Code projects.


Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that too, but to my mind the problem is 
not money but governance. Anyone with too much cash can throw it 
wherever wanted, and if some fall into Wikimedia pocket, that's fine.


But the moment a decision that impact so deeply Wikimedia governance and 
future happen, then maximum transparency must be present, communication 
must be extensive, and taking into account community feedback is 
extremely preferable. No one is perfect, myself included, so its all the 
more important to listen to external feedback. I said earlier that I 
found the knowledge engine was a good idea, but for what I red it seems 
that transparency didn't reach expectation of the community.


So, I was wrong my inferences around Denny, good news. Of course I would 
prefer to have other archived sources to confirm that. No mistrust 
intended, I think most of us are accustomed to put claims in perspective 
with sources and think critically.


For completeness, was this discussion online or – to bring bag the 
earlier stated testimony – around a pizza? If possible, could you 
provide a list of involved people? Did a single person took the final 
decision, or was it a show of hands, or some consensus emerged from 
discussion? Or maybe the community was consulted with a vote, and if 
yes, where can I find the archive?


Also archives show that lawyers were consulted on the topic, could we 
have a copy of their report?


At no time did Google or any other company take part in our 
discussions in the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they? From 
what I can see on their web page, Google has no problem with all kinds 
of different license terms in the data they display.
Because they are more and more moving to a business model of providing 
themselves what people are looking for to keep users in their sphere of 
tracking and influence, probably with the sole idea of generating more 
revenue I guess.
Also, I can tell you that we would have reacted in a very allergic way 
to such attempts, so if any company had approached us, this would 
quite likely have backfired. But, believe it or not, when we started 
it was all but clear that this would become a relevant project at all, 
and no major company even cared to lobby us. It was still mostly a few 
hackers getting together in varying locations in Berlin. There was a 
lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in this early phase of Wikidata 
(well, I guess we are still in this phase).
Please situate that in time so we can place that in a timeline. In March 
2012 Wikimedia DE announced the initial funding of 1.3 million Euros by 
Google, Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Gordon 
and Betty Moore Foundation.


So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past events 
that you have not even been close to (calling something "research" is 
no substitute for methodology and rigour). 
But that's all the problem here, no one should have to carry the pain of 
trying to reconstruct what happened through such a research. Process of 
this kind of decision should have been documented and should be easily 
be found in archives. If you have suggestion in methods, please provide 
them. Just denigrating the work don't help in any way to improve it. If 
there are additional sources that I missed, please provide them. If 
there are methodologies that would help improve the work, references are 
welcome.


Putting unsourced personal attacks against community members before 
all other arguments is a reckless way of maximising effect, and such 
rhetoric can damage our movement beyond this thread or topic. 
All this is built on references. If the analyze is wrong, for example 
because it missed crucial undocumented information this must be 
corrected with additional sources. Wikidata team, as far as I can

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Thad Guidry

Google and Wikidata,

Mathieu as an AI responder is really awesome !

Curious, what language is he programmed in and how long did it take you
guys to code him ?

:)
-Thad
+ThadGuidry 
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Hi James,

Le 30/11/2017 à 23:54, James Heald a écrit :

Mathieu,

You don't seem to grasp the essential legal point, though several 
people in this thread have already tried to tell you.


Copyright protects expression and creative originality.  It does not 
protect merely a collation of facts.
Well, let's recall 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Copyright_protection_in_the_US:


   A database is protected by copyright when the selection or
   arrangement is original and creative.^[2]
   
   The level of creativity required is low, so it doesn’t have to be
   very creative — as long as the author had some discretion and made
   some choices in what to include or how to organize it, the database
   is likely to be protected.

So, depending on how creative your collation arrangement is, copyright 
might apply (in the US). In Europe, as you point bellow, /sui generis/ 
rights might be enforceable.




The CC-SA licence is based on copyright.  Anything that is not 
protected by copyright is not protected by the CC-SA licence.


To the extent that an article can be reduced to a mere collation of 
facts, it is not protected by copyright.  What is protected is any 
originality or creativity in how those facts are organised and 
presented -- the expression, the sequence of thought, the selections 
of words, all the authorial choices in the text.
The problem not addressed in this reasoning is that all this "creative 
choices" can themselves be exposed as factual statements. This could be 
exposed in extensive development of several concurrent theses regarding 
the problem of knowledge and creativity from both a gnoseologic and 
epistemic perspectives. But admittedly, here this would be useless 
offtopic logorrhoea. So in short, through history people developed, 
inter alias, theories which states that everything is creative, nothing 
is creative, only some things are creative.


So the problem here is not that I can't grasp the legal point about the 
creativity argument, but that I'm not in position of enforcing what is 
considered creative nor predict whatever some undetermined legal entity 
might prefer to declare to be creative or not.


For that, you have to get the answer from some legal entity which 
through their mystic power inaccessible to mere mortal like me will be 
able to operate the magical performative statement 
 that will seal 
the destiny of a work into the realm of creativity or relegate it to 
vulgar combinatorial material for the rest of eternity (in the scope of 
its jurisdiction, until some other legal decision states otherwise).




*That* is the difference between a copyright-protected Wiki article on 
the one hand, and a Wikidata collection of facts on the other.



In the European Union collections of facts can be protected by 
database rights.


That is the path Open Streetmap chose, when they designed the ODbL, to 
prevent their work being eaten up and assimilated by closed commercial 
rivals.


It is not the choice Wikidata made.  And it is not the choice any of 
the Wiki projects made before Wikidata -- CC-SA disclaims database 
rights.
Actually, as far as I know, CC-by-sa-3.0-undeed states nothing about 
/suis generis/ rights, and so don't disclaim it but let it applied in 
all its extensiveness.


And that is the license that cover all other Wikimedia wiki projects 
(with a dual GFDL 1.3), except Commons where users chose whatever free 
licenses they want, and Wikidata which permit exclusively CC0.


And a large part of the inquiry on this topic is to determine who 
decided to use exclusively CC0, through which process and with which 
goals/perspectives. Some answers stated "long discussions on the topic", 
but I wasn't given any link so far with something like a vote on the 
topic, and until something like that is provided, it can't be checked 
that indeed the community made this decision. So a statement like "the 
choice Wikidata made" is inconvenient, as what denotation is supposed to 
be done of "Wikidata" in this context is all but trivial.



Yes, CC0 causes us some difficulties.

It means what we can import from OpenStreetmap is very restricted -- 
mass import falls foul of OSM's database rights; and also coordinates 
and boundaries are somewhat susceptible to judgment, so there is 
probably a copyright element to.


It also makes it difficult to import from official sources (eg the UK 
Open Government Licence) that use database rights to require 
attribution -- that is not an obligation we are prepared to pass on to 
out re-users, which means we generally have to forego such sources.
I think that with the solution already previously proposed to integrate 
a license attribute, it would be extremely easy for end user to filter 
items and statements that come with license they don't want to respect, 
while still enabling other t

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Markus Krötzsch

Dear Mathieu,

Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first 
chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other claims 
here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already doing this, and 
I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.

Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his earlier 
message (quote included below this email for reference): it was not 
Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a discussion among 
several people who had worked with open data for some time before 
Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this choice and still do. 
I have never received any money directly or indirectly from Google, 
though -- full disclosure -- I got several T-shirts for supervising in 
Summer of Code projects.

At no time did Google or any other company take part in our discussions 
in the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they? From what I can see 
on their web page, Google has no problem with all kinds of different 
license terms in the data they display. Also, I can tell you that we 
would have reacted in a very allergic way to such attempts, so if any 
company had approached us, this would quite likely have backfired. But, 
believe it or not, when we started it was all but clear that this would 
become a relevant project at all, and no major company even cared to 
lobby us. It was still mostly a few hackers getting together in varying 
locations in Berlin. There was a lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in 
this early phase of Wikidata (well, I guess we are still in this phase).

So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past events 
that you have not even been close to (calling something "research" is no 
substitute for methodology and rigour). Putting unsourced personal 
attacks against community members before all other arguments is a 
reckless way of maximising effect, and such rhetoric can damage our 
movement beyond this thread or topic. Our main strength is not our 
content but our community, and I am glad to see that many have already 
responded to you in such a measured and polite way.

Peace,

Markus

On 30.11.2017 09:55, John Erling Blad wrote:
> Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start of
> developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for
> CC0 was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started working for
> Google.
>
> As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first week
> of april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of
> development. That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may), as the
> delivery of the laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as I expected
> problems with reuse og external data. The arguments for CC0 convinced me.
>
> And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and
> Jens did too.

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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Scott MacLeod

Thanks, Luca,

Scott


On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 2:59 PM, Luca Martinelli 
wrote:

> Dear Scott,
>
> Wiktionary is CC BY-SA 3.0 as well, as all Wikimedia project are since
> around 2007.
>
> Wikidata too is under CC BY-SA 3.0, for its non-data part (that is,
> everything but ns0, that is CC0).
>
> L.
>
>
> Il 30 nov 2017 23:53, "Scott MacLeod" 
> ha scritto:
>
> Mathieu, Lydia and All,
>
> As a further clarification:
>
> I just looked up Wikipedia's license at bottom here -
> https://www.wikipedia.org/ - and it says it's CC-3 ((CC BY-SA 3.0)) -
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ - which allows for
> commercial use.
>
> Wikidata.org's is CC-0 ( CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) )
> which also allows for commercial use.
>
> Wiktionary doesn't seem to list a license on its front page -
> https://www.wiktionary.org/ .
>
> ( By way of comparison, both MIT OCW and MIT OCW Translated courses, which
> now seem to number 4, having recently lost Portuguese and Persian, use a
> CC-4 license ... ( 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) )
> https://ocw.mit.edu/
> https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
>
> Noncommercial means:
> The NonCommercial (“NC”) element is found in three of the six CC licenses:
> BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, and BY-NC-ND. In each of these licenses, NonCommercial is
> expressly defined as follows: “NonCommercial means not primarily intended
> for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.”Oct
> 15, 2017
> NonCommercial interpretation - Creative Commons
> https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation )
>
> (World University and School donated itself to Wikidata in 2015, but since
> WUaS is CC-4 MIT OpenCourseWare-centric in 5 languages, WUaS obviously
> doesn't donate CC MIT OCW).
>
> Here's more about CC licenses:
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
>
> Are there ways that Wikidata or the Wikimedia Foundation might develop
> further the Wikidata CC-0 license in conversation with Creative Commons
> organization itself (as an alternative to license laundering or license
> migration over time)?
>
> What kind of license is Wiktionary, as a Wikipedia/Wikidata sister
> project, likely to list on its front page in the future, especially giving
> its relevance for a universal translator, and for Wikimedia's Content
> Translation?
>
> I'm grateful so much thought has gone into these CC licenses - and that
> there are such a variety of them, some explicitly international.
>
> Cheers,
> Scott
> CC-? World University and School
> https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nation_States
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 1:17 PM, mathieu stumpf guntz <
> psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:
>
>> Le 30/11/2017 à 18:05, Yair Rand a écrit :
>>
>> Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary.
>>
>> We will see that in the future. At least the proposed model allow to
>> include most things that you might find in a Wiktionary article, plus it
>> comes with all the benefit of a relational(-like) database.
>>
>> See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikibaseLexeme/Data_Model
>> for more information on what it will allow or not.
>>
>>
>> Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under
>> CC-0.
>>
>> Sure. Not yet. But if it continue to improve, as well as tools to
>> generate prose from it, at some point it might reach a good job at doing
>> just that.
>>
>> Structured data for Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with
>> CC-0-licensed content.
>>
>> Well, unlike one try to include use it in a very different way than what
>> it is aiming at, there is no chance as pictures contains far more
>> information than their metadata. Now, technically one might probably be
>> able to store the whole picture in that kind of structure (provided no size
>> restriction is enforced), but this is not the goal.
>>
>> This is very different case than the Wiktionary case. The case of
>> Wikipedia might be closer, but you can not make a simple one-to-one
>> correspondence between Wikidata elements and Wikipedia prose. Actually
>> Wikipedia extraction in statements usable in Wikidata is far more easier
>> with current natural language processing toolkits. One the other hand such
>> a bijective correspondence between a Wiktionary article and a set of
>> WikibaseLexeme elements is clearly straight forward. So the domain of
>> targeted knowledge documentation is extremely overlapping. Plus the
>> Wikibase approach bring many advantages in term of knowledge factorisation.
>>
>> To my mind, WikibaseLexeme have a good potential to quickly supersede our
>> plethora of sparsely communicating Wiktionaries. At least far sooner than
>> Wikibase will have a chance to approach the same level as Wikipedia article.
>>
>> The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable.
>> The fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a
>> picture of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts t

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Luca Martinelli

Dear Scott,

Wiktionary is CC BY-SA 3.0 as well, as all Wikimedia project are since
around 2007.

Wikidata too is under CC BY-SA 3.0, for its non-data part (that is,
everything but ns0, that is CC0).

L.

Il 30 nov 2017 23:53, "Scott MacLeod" 
ha scritto:

Mathieu, Lydia and All,

As a further clarification:

I just looked up Wikipedia's license at bottom here -
https://www.wikipedia.org/ - and it says it's CC-3 ((CC BY-SA 3.0)) -
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ - which allows for
commercial use.

Wikidata.org's is CC-0 ( CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) )
which also allows for commercial use.

Wiktionary doesn't seem to list a license on its front page -
https://www.wiktionary.org/ .

( By way of comparison, both MIT OCW and MIT OCW Translated courses, which
now seem to number 4, having recently lost Portuguese and Persian, use a
CC-4 license ... ( 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) )
https://ocw.mit.edu/
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Noncommercial means:
The NonCommercial (“NC”) element is found in three of the six CC licenses:
BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, and BY-NC-ND. In each of these licenses, NonCommercial is
expressly defined as follows: “NonCommercial means not primarily intended
for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.”Oct
15, 2017
NonCommercial interpretation - Creative Commons
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation )

(World University and School donated itself to Wikidata in 2015, but since
WUaS is CC-4 MIT OpenCourseWare-centric in 5 languages, WUaS obviously
doesn't donate CC MIT OCW).

Here's more about CC licenses:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Are there ways that Wikidata or the Wikimedia Foundation might develop
further the Wikidata CC-0 license in conversation with Creative Commons
organization itself (as an alternative to license laundering or license
migration over time)?

What kind of license is Wiktionary, as a Wikipedia/Wikidata sister project,
likely to list on its front page in the future, especially giving its
relevance for a universal translator, and for Wikimedia's Content
Translation?

I'm grateful so much thought has gone into these CC licenses - and that
there are such a variety of them, some explicitly international.

Cheers,
Scott
CC-? World University and School
https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nation_States

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 1:17 PM, mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

> Le 30/11/2017 à 18:05, Yair Rand a écrit :
>
> Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary.
>
> We will see that in the future. At least the proposed model allow to
> include most things that you might find in a Wiktionary article, plus it
> comes with all the benefit of a relational(-like) database.
>
> See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikibaseLexeme/Data_Model
> for more information on what it will allow or not.
>
>
> Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under
> CC-0.
>
> Sure. Not yet. But if it continue to improve, as well as tools to generate
> prose from it, at some point it might reach a good job at doing just that.
>
> Structured data for Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with
> CC-0-licensed content.
>
> Well, unlike one try to include use it in a very different way than what
> it is aiming at, there is no chance as pictures contains far more
> information than their metadata. Now, technically one might probably be
> able to store the whole picture in that kind of structure (provided no size
> restriction is enforced), but this is not the goal.
>
> This is very different case than the Wiktionary case. The case of
> Wikipedia might be closer, but you can not make a simple one-to-one
> correspondence between Wikidata elements and Wikipedia prose. Actually
> Wikipedia extraction in statements usable in Wikidata is far more easier
> with current natural language processing toolkits. One the other hand such
> a bijective correspondence between a Wiktionary article and a set of
> WikibaseLexeme elements is clearly straight forward. So the domain of
> targeted knowledge documentation is extremely overlapping. Plus the
> Wikibase approach bring many advantages in term of knowledge factorisation.
>
> To my mind, WikibaseLexeme have a good potential to quickly supersede our
> plethora of sparsely communicating Wiktionaries. At least far sooner than
> Wikibase will have a chance to approach the same level as Wikipedia article.
>
> The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable.
> The fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a
> picture of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" is
> the plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb in
> Esperanto, are not copyrightable.
>
> Surely that is something we all agree. :)
>
> Even if they were copyrightable, copyrighting them independently would
> harm

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread James Heald


Mathieu,

You don't seem to grasp the essential legal point, though several people 
in this thread have already tried to tell you.


Copyright protects expression and creative originality.  It does not 
protect merely a collation of facts.


The CC-SA licence is based on copyright.  Anything that is not protected 
by copyright is not protected by the CC-SA licence.


To the extent that an article can be reduced to a mere collation of 
facts, it is not protected by copyright.  What is protected is any 
originality or creativity in how those facts are organised and presented 
-- the expression, the sequence of thought, the selections of words, all 
the authorial choices in the text.


*That* is the difference between a copyright-protected Wiki article on 
the one hand, and a Wikidata collection of facts on the other.



In the European Union collections of facts can be protected by database 
rights.


That is the path Open Streetmap chose, when they designed the ODbL, to 
prevent their work being eaten up and assimilated by closed commercial 
rivals.


It is not the choice Wikidata made.  And it is not the choice any of the 
Wiki projects made before Wikidata -- CC-SA disclaims database rights.


The debate between the two views goes back at least as far as GPL vs 
BSD, and the arguments have been gone over many many times in many many 
communities over that time.



Yes, CC0 causes us some difficulties.

It means what we can import from OpenStreetmap is very restricted -- 
mass import falls foul of OSM's database rights; and also coordinates 
and boundaries are somewhat susceptible to judgment, so there is 
probably a copyright element to.


It also makes it difficult to import from official sources (eg the UK 
Open Government Licence) that use database rights to require attribution 
-- that is not an obligation we are prepared to pass on to out re-users, 
which means we generally have to forego such sources.


But the counterbalance is that for many people it is the openness and 
reusability for all purposes of Wikidata that very much encourages them 
to contribute -- they feel the more reusable and reused their work is, 
the more it is worth contributing.



The important point though is that this boat has sailed.  Wikidata is 
CC0, and it is not going to change now.


Yes, somebody could fork the data from Wikidata into their own ODbL 
project if they wanted to.   CC0 allows that.  (The reverse direction is 
what is difficult).  You might have preferred ODBL on viral GPL-style 
community-building (or community-isolating) grounds.  But that is not 
going to happen.


As regards Wiktionary, it means that Wikidata cannot import from 
Wiktionary anything that represents original expression or original 
creativity.


But there is no restriction, not from copyright law, nor from the 
CC-BY-SA licence, to stop Wikidata -- or anyone else -- extracting and 
systematically storing standard uncontroversial facts, so long as 
nothing of original expression is taken.


Please confirm that you understand this.


Best regards,

James.


On 30/11/2017 21:17, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:

Le 30/11/2017 à 18:05, Yair Rand a écrit :

Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary.
We will see that in the future. At least the proposed model allow to 
include most things that you might find in a Wiktionary article, plus it 
comes with all the benefit of a relational(-like) database.


See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikibaseLexeme/Data_Model 
for more information on what it will allow or not.


Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under 
CC-0.
Sure. Not yet. But if it continue to improve, as well as tools to 
generate prose from it, at some point it might reach a good job at doing 
just that.
Structured data for Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with 
CC-0-licensed content.
Well, unlike one try to include use it in a very different way than what 
it is aiming at, there is no chance as pictures contains far more 
information than their metadata. Now, technically one might probably be 
able to store the whole picture in that kind of structure (provided no 
size restriction is enforced), but this is not the goal.


This is very different case than the Wiktionary case. The case of 
Wikipedia might be closer, but you can not make a simple one-to-one 
correspondence between Wikidata elements and Wikipedia prose. Actually 
Wikipedia extraction in statements usable in Wikidata is far more easier 
with current natural language processing toolkits. One the other hand 
such a bijective correspondence between a Wiktionary article and a set 
of WikibaseLexeme elements is clearly straight forward. So the domain of 
targeted knowledge documentation is extremely overlapping. Plus the 
Wikibase approach bring many advantages in term of knowledge factorisation.


To my mind, WikibaseLexeme have a good potential to quickly supersede 
our plethora of sparsely communicating Wiktionaries. At least far so

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Scott MacLeod

Mathieu, Lydia and All,

As a further clarification:

I just looked up Wikipedia's license at bottom here -
https://www.wikipedia.org/ - and it says it's CC-3 ((CC BY-SA 3.0)) -
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ - which allows for
commercial use.

Wikidata.org's is CC-0 ( CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) )
which also allows for commercial use.

Wiktionary doesn't seem to list a license on its front page -
https://www.wiktionary.org/ .

( By way of comparison, both MIT OCW and MIT OCW Translated courses, which
now seem to number 4, having recently lost Portuguese and Persian, use a
CC-4 license ... ( 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) )
https://ocw.mit.edu/
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Noncommercial means:
The NonCommercial (“NC”) element is found in three of the six CC licenses:
BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, and BY-NC-ND. In each of these licenses, NonCommercial is
expressly defined as follows: “NonCommercial means not primarily intended
for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.”Oct
15, 2017
NonCommercial interpretation - Creative Commons
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation )

(World University and School donated itself to Wikidata in 2015, but since
WUaS is CC-4 MIT OpenCourseWare-centric in 5 languages, WUaS obviously
doesn't donate CC MIT OCW).

Here's more about CC licenses:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Are there ways that Wikidata or the Wikimedia Foundation might develop
further the Wikidata CC-0 license in conversation with Creative Commons
organization itself (as an alternative to license laundering or license
migration over time)?

What kind of license is Wiktionary, as a Wikipedia/Wikidata sister project,
likely to list on its front page in the future, especially giving its
relevance for a universal translator, and for Wikimedia's Content
Translation?

I'm grateful so much thought has gone into these CC licenses - and that
there are such a variety of them, some explicitly international.

Cheers,
Scott
CC-? World University and School
https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nation_States

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 1:17 PM, mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

> Le 30/11/2017 à 18:05, Yair Rand a écrit :
>
> Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary.
>
> We will see that in the future. At least the proposed model allow to
> include most things that you might find in a Wiktionary article, plus it
> comes with all the benefit of a relational(-like) database.
>
> See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikibaseLexeme/Data_Model
> for more information on what it will allow or not.
>
>
> Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under
> CC-0.
>
> Sure. Not yet. But if it continue to improve, as well as tools to generate
> prose from it, at some point it might reach a good job at doing just that.
>
> Structured data for Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with
> CC-0-licensed content.
>
> Well, unlike one try to include use it in a very different way than what
> it is aiming at, there is no chance as pictures contains far more
> information than their metadata. Now, technically one might probably be
> able to store the whole picture in that kind of structure (provided no size
> restriction is enforced), but this is not the goal.
>
> This is very different case than the Wiktionary case. The case of
> Wikipedia might be closer, but you can not make a simple one-to-one
> correspondence between Wikidata elements and Wikipedia prose. Actually
> Wikipedia extraction in statements usable in Wikidata is far more easier
> with current natural language processing toolkits. One the other hand such
> a bijective correspondence between a Wiktionary article and a set of
> WikibaseLexeme elements is clearly straight forward. So the domain of
> targeted knowledge documentation is extremely overlapping. Plus the
> Wikibase approach bring many advantages in term of knowledge factorisation.
>
> To my mind, WikibaseLexeme have a good potential to quickly supersede our
> plethora of sparsely communicating Wiktionaries. At least far sooner than
> Wikibase will have a chance to approach the same level as Wikipedia article.
>
> The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable.
> The fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a
> picture of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" is
> the plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb in
> Esperanto, are not copyrightable.
>
> Surely that is something we all agree. :)
>
> Even if they were copyrightable, copyrighting them independently would
> harm their potential reuse, as elements of a database, as has been
> previously explained.
>
> Any information monopoly is a possible obstacle to reuse. No one will deny
> that, I guess. But information monopolies, such as copyright, patent and so
> on do exists.

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Le 30/11/2017 à 18:05, Yair Rand a écrit :

Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary.
We will see that in the future. At least the proposed model allow to 
include most things that you might find in a Wiktionary article, plus it 
comes with all the benefit of a relational(-like) database.


See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikibaseLexeme/Data_Model 
for more information on what it will allow or not.


Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under 
CC-0.
Sure. Not yet. But if it continue to improve, as well as tools to 
generate prose from it, at some point it might reach a good job at doing 
just that.
Structured data for Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with 
CC-0-licensed content.
Well, unlike one try to include use it in a very different way than what 
it is aiming at, there is no chance as pictures contains far more 
information than their metadata. Now, technically one might probably be 
able to store the whole picture in that kind of structure (provided no 
size restriction is enforced), but this is not the goal.


This is very different case than the Wiktionary case. The case of 
Wikipedia might be closer, but you can not make a simple one-to-one 
correspondence between Wikidata elements and Wikipedia prose. Actually 
Wikipedia extraction in statements usable in Wikidata is far more easier 
with current natural language processing toolkits. One the other hand 
such a bijective correspondence between a Wiktionary article and a set 
of WikibaseLexeme elements is clearly straight forward. So the domain of 
targeted knowledge documentation is extremely overlapping. Plus the 
Wikibase approach bring many advantages in term of knowledge factorisation.


To my mind, WikibaseLexeme have a good potential to quickly supersede 
our plethora of sparsely communicating Wiktionaries. At least far sooner 
than Wikibase will have a chance to approach the same level as Wikipedia 
article.
The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, 
copyrightable. The fact that 
File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a picture of a 
butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" is the 
plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb in 
Esperanto, are not copyrightable.

Surely that is something we all agree. :)
Even if they were copyrightable, copyrighting them independently would 
harm their potential reuse, as elements of a database, as has been 
previously explained.
Any information monopoly is a possible obstacle to reuse. No one will 
deny that, I guess. But information monopolies, such as copyright, 
patent and so on do exists. And so does unequal access to resources 
useful for human flourishing, including knowledge.


Now, personally I am not satisfied with this situation, nor with the 
growth of inequalities. A part of my motivation in contributing in 
Wikimedia projects is that it might contribute to make situation evolve 
otherwise. That might not enter in the field of motivations of every 
contributor, but I guess I'm not alone on this.


So the question for me is not, "how do we make our knowledge bank 
current snapshots as reusable as possible right now?", but "how do we 
build a sustainable movement which maintain and update knowledge banks 
that are as accessible as possible for every single human out there with 
this goal of sustainability in mind?".


Maybe it's not what every single stakeholder of our movement is 
expecting. But I don't feel that this personal vision is at odd with 
what is stated in the strategic direction. And I hope I'm not alone 
holding this vision.


Wikipedia articles and Commons Media are not structured data, and as 
such, they do not belong in Wikidata.
I think you statement is wrong here. Wikipedia articles are structured 
on several analysable levels. For example, from the point of view of a 
common linguistic theory,  they are structured and analysable on 
syntaxique level, semantic level and pragmatic level. But they are many 
other way in which you might analyse them because they are structured 
data. But it is true that there are not structured in a way that ease 
SQL-like querying.


However, every single sentence contained in Wikipedia articles can be 
reduce down to a set of predicates, that is they are reducible in things 
that can be stored in Wikidata. There is no technical barrier I'm aware 
of that prevent putting the whole content of all Wikipedia in as many as 
required statements within Wikidata.


Elements of prose in Wiktionary, such as definitions, appendices, 
extensive usage notes and notes on grammar and whatnot, are 
copyrightable. Similar to Wikipedia articles, licensing them under 
CC-BY-SA would not particularly harm their reuse, as attribution is 
completely feasible. They are also not structured data, and can not be 
made into structured data.
Well, as far as I'm concerned that would be great news to hear that 
Wikidata team will allow contributors to indeed i

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Vi to

+1

Wikipedia and wiktionary themselves rely upon taking "facts, not they way
they're stated" from sources.

Vito

2017-11-30 18:05 GMT+01:00 Yair Rand :

> Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary. Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia,
> and force all articles to be under CC-0. Structured data for Commons
> doesn't replace all Commons media with CC-0-licensed content. They didn't
> even set up parallel projects to hold CC-0 articles or media. There is no
> reason to believe that structured data for Wiktionary would do any of these
> things. Wikidata is for holding structured data, and only structured data.
>
> The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable.
> The fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a
> picture of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" is
> the plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb in
> Esperanto, are not copyrightable. Even if they were copyrightable,
> copyrighting them independently would harm their potential reuse, as
> elements of a database, as has been previously explained.
>
> A Wikipedia article is copyrightable. Licensing it under CC-BY-SA does not
> particularly harm its reuse, and makes it so that reuse can happen with
> attribution. Wikidata includes links to Wikipedia articles, and while the
> links are under CC-0, the linked content is under CC-BY-SA. Similarly for
> Commons content. Wikipedia articles and Commons Media are not structured
> data, and as such, they do not belong in Wikidata.
>
> Elements of prose in Wiktionary, such as definitions, appendices,
> extensive usage notes and notes on grammar and whatnot, are copyrightable.
> Similar to Wikipedia articles, licensing them under CC-BY-SA would not
> particularly harm their reuse, as attribution is completely feasible. They
> are also not structured data, and can not be made into structured data.
> Wikidata will not be laundering this data to CC-0, nor will it be setting
> up a parallel project to duplicate the efforts under a license which is not
> appropriate for the type of content.
>
> Attempting to license the database's contents under CC-BY-SA would not
> ensure attribution, and would harm reuse. I fail to see any potential
> benefits to using the more restrictive license. Attribution will be
> required where it is possible (in Wiktionary proper), and content will be
> as reusable as possible in areas where requiring attribution isn't feasible
> (in Wikidata). There's no real conflict here.
>
> -- Yair Rand
>
> 2017-11-29 16:45 GMT-05:00 Mathieu Stumpf Guntz <
> psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:
>
>> Saluton ĉiuj,
>>
>> I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
>> Wiktionary User Group talk page
>> ,
>> because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
>> point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
>> might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so
>> please be bold.
>>
>> Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that I
>> stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a bright
>> future full of even more amazing things than what it already brung so far.
>> My sole concern is really a license issue.
>>
>> Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:
>>
>> Thank you Lydia Pintscher
>>  for
>> taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
>> 
>> miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been raised.
>>
>> Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
>> decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this
>> inquiry on the topic
>> 
>> advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice
>> toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it
>> short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth
>> noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
>> Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
>> established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft
>> co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
>> .
>> To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the puppet
>> trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm of Wikimedia.
>> For a less tragic, more argumentative version, pl

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Yair Rand

Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary. Wikidata did not replace Wikipedia,
and force all articles to be under CC-0. Structured data for Commons
doesn't replace all Commons media with CC-0-licensed content. They didn't
even set up parallel projects to hold CC-0 articles or media. There is no
reason to believe that structured data for Wiktionary would do any of these
things. Wikidata is for holding structured data, and only structured data.

The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable. The
fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a picture
of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" is the
plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb in
Esperanto, are not copyrightable. Even if they were copyrightable,
copyrighting them independently would harm their potential reuse, as
elements of a database, as has been previously explained.

A Wikipedia article is copyrightable. Licensing it under CC-BY-SA does not
particularly harm its reuse, and makes it so that reuse can happen with
attribution. Wikidata includes links to Wikipedia articles, and while the
links are under CC-0, the linked content is under CC-BY-SA. Similarly for
Commons content. Wikipedia articles and Commons Media are not structured
data, and as such, they do not belong in Wikidata.

Elements of prose in Wiktionary, such as definitions, appendices, extensive
usage notes and notes on grammar and whatnot, are copyrightable. Similar to
Wikipedia articles, licensing them under CC-BY-SA would not particularly
harm their reuse, as attribution is completely feasible. They are also not
structured data, and can not be made into structured data. Wikidata will
not be laundering this data to CC-0, nor will it be setting up a parallel
project to duplicate the efforts under a license which is not appropriate
for the type of content.

Attempting to license the database's contents under CC-BY-SA would not
ensure attribution, and would harm reuse. I fail to see any potential
benefits to using the more restrictive license. Attribution will be
required where it is possible (in Wiktionary proper), and content will be
as reusable as possible in areas where requiring attribution isn't feasible
(in Wikidata). There's no real conflict here.

-- Yair Rand

2017-11-29 16:45 GMT-05:00 Mathieu Stumpf Guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:

> Saluton ĉiuj,
>
> I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
> Wiktionary User Group talk page
> ,
> because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
> point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
> might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so
> please be bold.
>
> Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that I
> stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a bright
> future full of even more amazing things than what it already brung so far.
> My sole concern is really a license issue.
>
> Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:
>
> Thank you Lydia Pintscher
>  for
> taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
>  miss
> too many important points to solve all concerns which have been raised.
>
> Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
> decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this
> inquiry on the topic
> 
> advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice
> toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it
> short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth
> noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
> Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
> established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft
> co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
> .
> To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the puppet
> trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm of Wikimedia.
> For a less tragic, more argumentative version, please see the research
> project (work in progress, only chapter 1 is in good enough shape, and it's
> only available in French so far). Some proofs that this claim is completely
> wrong are welcome, as it would be great that in fact that was the community
> that was the d

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Thomas Douillard

> you might enumerate the position of each occurrence of a word in Harry
Potter, that's all pure facts after all. But publishing an extensive set of
that kind of factual statements would let anyone rebuild this books.

This is just a representation of the artwork. And the artwork is protected
as a creative work. So you can’t do that without violating database right
(I guess a court won’t buy the argument « but this was not the ebook of
Harry Potter, this was the zipfile of an ebook of Harry Potter.) You can’t
« hack » the law that way as it has been robust ehough to protect numerical
and paper versions of book withou a sustantial change, an editor don’t have
to protect the little endian as well as the big endian version of the file
:). What is not protected is the idea : you can make a story about a
sorcerer school.

What is a work of the spirit is defined by the law, in france :
http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/principes_droit_auteur.html A criteria,
relevant in databases is « originality »
*: another author would not make the same work. In pure factual facts, like
a lot of stuffs, a list of work ever published by a specific editor, any
author would do the same list eventually. Only the specific presentation of
the data can apply as « droit d’auteur ». However databases obey a specific
law that aims to protect an organisation that uses a « substancial » amout
of resources to build a specific dataset. An example is the french organism
IGN https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityPage/Q1665102
 who recolted,
updated and publisshed detailed geographic maps of france. Such an editor
is allowed to disallow the extraction of a « substancial » amount of datas
from his dataset … this last 15 years from the point the editor stops
unpdating the data. *

2017-11-30 13:38 GMT+01:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:

>
>
> Le 30/11/2017 à 10:14, John Erling Blad a écrit :
>
> A single property licensing scheme would allow storage of data, it might
> or might not allow reuse of the licensed data together with other data.
> Remember that all entries in the servers might be part of an mashup with
> all other entries.
>
> That's a very interesting point. Does anyone know a clear extensive report
> of what is legal or not regarding massive import of data extracted from
> some source?
>
> Indeed, if there was really no limit in using "factual statement" data,
> that would be a huge loophole in copyright. For example you might enumerate
> the position of each occurrence of a word in Harry Potter, that's all pure
> facts after all. But publishing an extensive set of that kind of factual
> statements would let anyone rebuild this books.
>
> The same might happen with an extensive extraction of data stored
> initially in Wikipedia under CC-by-sa, and imported in Wikidata. There is
> already the ArticlePlaceholder[1] extension which is a first step in
> generating whole complete prosodic encyclopaedic article, which then should
> be logically be publishable under CC0. Thus the concerns of license
> laundering.
>
> Not having a way to track sources and their corresponding licenses doesn't
> make automagically disappear that there are licenses issues in the first
> place. An integrating license tracking system should enable to detect
> possible infractions in remixes. Users should be informed that what they
> are trying to mix is legally authorized by the miscellaneous ultimate
> sources from which Wikidata gathered them, or not. Until some solid legal
> report point in this direction, it's not accurate to pretend unilaterally
> that they can do whatever they want regardless of sources from which
> Wikidata gathered them in the first place even if it's a massive import of
> a differently licensed source.
>
> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ArticlePlaceholder
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 9:55 AM, John Erling Blad 
> wrote:
>
>> Please keep this civil and on topic!
>>
>> Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start of
>> developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for CC0
>> was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started working for Google.
>>
>> As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first week
>> of april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of development.
>> That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may), as the delivery of the
>> laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as I expected problems with reuse
>> og external data. The arguments for CC0 convinced me.
>>
>> And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and Jens
>> did too.
>>
>> Argument is pretty simple: Part A has some data A and claim license A.
>> Part B has some data B and claim license B. Both license A and  license B
>> are sticky, this later data C that use an aggregation of A and B must
>> satisfy both license A and license B. That is not viable.
>>
>> M

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 30/11/2017 à 10:13, Egon Willighagen a écrit :

Dear Mathieu,

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:45 PM, Mathieu Stumpf Guntz 
mailto:psychosl...@culture-libre.org>> 
wrote:


I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta
Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page

,
because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community
on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely
misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm
extremely interested to know it, so please be bold.

As having contributed to many open database and as user of many open 
database, the CCZero is my default choice for making data open. 
Adoption of this license is, IMHO, the prime reason Wikidata is 
growing so fast, and integrated so fast in many use cases.
Well, that would indeed be a huge point in favor of CC0 then. 
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to turn that into a measurable 
analyze, as too many factors might come coincidentally to this. However, 
since you are contributor of many open database, maybe you are aware of 
some studies on the subject which can back your opinion.


License incompatibilities have been a major concern in open source 
development and academic research. Yes, there too, there is a 
continuous almost-religious and unsolved discussion about copylefting, 
but the plain experience there is that the closer to the idea of 
public domain, the easier it is to use. The advantages of CCZero have 
been widely discussed in the life sciences, and while not everyone 
choice, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for many.
Well, surely my message don't help to make it obvious, but I'm not 
radically against CC0, and don't deny it does have huge advantages in 
reuse. As an example I already gave the CC0/public domain for works 
publishd by State institutions. This is something that I am completely 
favorable to and will defend and promote anytime I can.


I also note that public domain (which CCZero formalizes across 
jurisdictions) is still the "ideal" license when uploading images to 
Wikimedia, suggesting more of Wikimedia actually finds the CCZero idea 
very welcome.
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you are talking about things like 
pictures that the NASA release, I think it falls in the case exposed 
above. If you are speaking of the most used license on Wikimedia by 
benevolent contributors, I'm not aware of the statistics on this topic, 
but would be interested to have some.


Also stress that in no way I recognize myself in your comments about 
Denny and Google.

I guess it's all  in your honour.
And your comment that "freedom of one is murder and slavery of others" 
needs some refinement, IMHO; my definition of "freedom" is quite 
different and I experience your definition as abusive and offensive.
If you mean "freedom of one begins where it confirms freedom of others", 
it's not "my" definition, however I could not give proper credit to it. 
Maybe Joseph Déjacque was among the first to publish this with some 
variation in the exact formulation. But really this not "mine 
definition". Also it is of course not the ultimate definition of freedom 
that everybody have to agree with.


If you are talking about the more dramatic example of "freedom abuse" I 
provided next to this definition, as far as I'm aware it's more or less 
my forgery. Although it probably was somewhat influenced by a comment of 
Teofilo[1].


Suggestion of less dramatic examples which enlighten the point just as 
well are welcome.


[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata#Teofilo



The CCZero license of Wikidata is essential to my contributions and 
use of Wikimedia products. The chemistry knowledge in Wikidata is 100x 
more useful (to me) than that in Wikipedia etc. That is in part 
because of the machine readability, but also to a large part by the 
choice of CCZero.


I hope this helps,

with kind regards,

Egon

--
E.L. Willighagen
Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT
Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/)
Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw
Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/
PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers
ORCID: -0001-7542-0286
ImpactStory: https://impactstory.org/u/egonwillighagen


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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 30/11/2017 à 10:14, John Erling Blad a écrit :
A single property licensing scheme would allow storage of data, it 
might or might not allow reuse of the licensed data together with 
other data. Remember that all entries in the servers might be part of 
an mashup with all other entries.
That's a very interesting point. Does anyone know a clear extensive 
report of what is legal or not regarding massive import of data 
extracted from some source?


Indeed, if there was really no limit in using "factual statement" data, 
that would be a huge loophole in copyright. For example you might 
enumerate the position of each occurrence of a word in Harry Potter, 
that's all pure facts after all. But publishing an extensive set of that 
kind of factual statements would let anyone rebuild this books.


The same might happen with an extensive extraction of data stored 
initially in Wikipedia under CC-by-sa, and imported in Wikidata. There 
is already the ArticlePlaceholder[1] extension which is a first step in 
generating whole complete prosodic encyclopaedic article, which then 
should be logically be publishable under CC0. Thus the concerns of 
license laundering.


Not having a way to track sources and their corresponding licenses 
doesn't make automagically disappear that there are licenses issues in 
the first place. An integrating license tracking system should enable to 
detect possible infractions in remixes. Users should be informed that 
what they are trying to mix is legally authorized by the miscellaneous 
ultimate sources from which Wikidata gathered them, or not. Until some 
solid legal report point in this direction, it's not accurate to pretend 
unilaterally that they can do whatever they want regardless of sources 
from which Wikidata gathered them in the first place even if it's a 
massive import of a differently licensed source.


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ArticlePlaceholder



On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 9:55 AM, John Erling Blad > wrote:


Please keep this civil and on topic!

Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start
of developing code for the project, and as I recall it the
arguments for CC0 was valid and sound. That was long before Danny
started working for Google.

As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first
week of april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of
development. That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may),
as the delivery of the laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as
I expected problems with reuse og external data. The arguments for
CC0 convinced me.

And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen
and Jens did too.

Argument is pretty simple: Part A has some data A and claim
license A. Part B has some data B and claim license B. Both
license A and  license B are sticky, this later data C that use an
aggregation of A and B must satisfy both license A and license B.
That is not viable.

Moving forward to a safe, non-sticky license seems to be the only
viable solution, and this leads to CC0.

Feel free to discuss the merrit of our choice but do not use
personal attacs. Thank you.


Den tor. 30. nov. 2017, 09.11 skrev Luca Martinelli
mailto:martinellil...@gmail.com>>:

Oh, and by the way, ODbL was considered as a potential
license, but I recall that that license could have been
incompatible for reuse with CC BY-SA 3.0. It was actually a
point of discussion with the Italian OpenStreetMap community
back in 2013, when I first presented at the OSM-IT meeting the
possibility of a collaboration between WD and OSM.

L.

Il 30 nov 2017 08:57, "Luca Martinelli"
mailto:martinellil...@gmail.com>>
ha scritto:

I basically stopped reading this email after the first
attack to Denny.

I was there since the beginning, and I do recall the
*extensive* discussion about what license to use. CC0 was
chosen, among other things, because of the moronic EU rule
about database rights, that CC 3.0 licenses didn't allow
us to counter - please remember that 4.0 were still under
discussion, and we couldn't afford the luxury of waiting
for 4.0 to come out before publishing Wikidata.

And possibly next time provide a TL;DR version of your
email at the top.

Cheers,

L.


Il 29 nov 2017 22:46, "Mathieu Stumpf Guntz"
mailto:psychosl...@culture-libre.org>> ha scritto:

Saluton ĉiuj,

I forward here the message I initially posted on the
Meta Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Andy Mabbett

On 30 November 2017 at 09:16, John Erling Blad  wrote:

> Sorry for the sprelling errojs

Post of the year!

However, please will *everyone* trim quoted material from their
replies? The OP was extremely long, and I have now received several
unnecessary duplicate copies of it.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 30/11/2017 à 11:45, Luca Martinelli a écrit :
Il 30 nov 2017 09:55, "John Erling Blad" > ha scritto:


Please keep this civil and on topic!

I was just pointing out that CC0 wasn't forced down our throat by 
Silicon Valley's Fifth Column supposed embodiment, that we actually 
discussed several alternatives (ODbL included, which I saw was 
mentioned in the original message of this thread) and that that 
several of the objections made here were actually founded, as several 
other discussions happened outside this ML confirmed.
Once again, I'm interested to have any reference toward this 
discussions. If it can be proven with those references that I'm just 
completely wrong, that's great. But I want sources to be convinced of that.


I'm sorry if it appeared I wanted to start a brawl, it wasn't the 
case. For this misunderstanding, I'm sorry.
No problem for me. I understand that people can feel annoyed with how I 
formultated my message and reacted accordingly.


L.


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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

This was added to the wrong email, sorry for that.

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 11:45 AM, Luca Martinelli 
wrote:

> Il 30 nov 2017 09:55, "John Erling Blad"  ha scritto:
>
> Please keep this civil and on topic!
>
> I was just pointing out that CC0 wasn't forced down our throat by Silicon
> Valley's Fifth Column supposed embodiment, that we actually discussed
> several alternatives (ODbL included, which I saw was mentioned in the
> original message of this thread) and that that several of the objections
> made here were actually founded, as several other discussions happened
> outside this ML confirmed.
>
> I'm sorry if it appeared I wanted to start a brawl, it wasn't the case.
> For this misunderstanding, I'm sorry.
>
> L.
>
> ___
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>
>
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 30/11/2017 à 08:57, Luca Martinelli a écrit :

I basically stopped reading this email after the first attack to Denny.
That's sad to read, but I guess I must mostly blame my unfortunate 
formulations.


I was there since the beginning, and I do recall the *extensive* 
discussion about what license to use. CC0 was chosen, among other 
things, because of the moronic EU rule about database rights, that CC 
3.0 licenses didn't allow us to counter - please remember that 4.0 
were still under discussion, and we couldn't afford the luxury of 
waiting for 4.0 to come out before publishing Wikidata.

I welcome any reference to this discussions.


And possibly next time provide a TL;DR version of your email at the top.

Ok, thank you for this suggestion, I'll do that.



Cheers,

L.


Il 29 nov 2017 22:46, "Mathieu Stumpf Guntz" 
mailto:psychosl...@culture-libre.org>> 
ha scritto:


Saluton ĉiuj,

I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta
Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page

,
because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community
on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely
misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm
extremely interested to know it, so please be bold.

Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind
that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I
wish it a bright future full of even more amazing things than what
it already brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.

Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

Thank you Lydia Pintscher

for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer

miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have
been raised.

Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as
this inquiry on the topic


advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata
choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who –
to make it short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph
team. Also it worth noting that Google funded a quarter of the
initial development work. Another quarter came from the Gordon and
Betty Moore Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half
the money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Institute
for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]

.
To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the
puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm
of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version,
please see the research project (work in progress, only chapter 1
is in good enough shape, and it's only available in French so
far). Some proofs that this claim is completely wrong are welcome,
as it would be great that in fact that was the community that was
the driving force behind this single license choice and that it is
the best choice for its future, not the future of giant tech
companies. This would be a great contribution to bring such a
happy light on this subject, so we can all let this issue alone
and go back contributing in more interesting topics.

Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia.

Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge.
So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal. 
This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible.

Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic
direction: Service and //*Equity*/

.
Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible.
That is, starting where it confirms each others freedom.
Because under this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery
of others. 
CC-0 is one step towards that.

That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have
to agree without some convincing proof. 
Data is different from many other things we produce in Wikimedia

in that it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on
much more extensively.
No it's not. From a data pr

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Hoi Gerard,


Le 30/11/2017 à 08:46, Gerard Meijssen a écrit :

Hoi,
With all due respect. The way you treat Denny Vrandečić is a personal 
attack.
If he feels so, then I apologize to him. I'm not in a quest against any 
one, I don't make the problem a question of person. Also, I initially 
where far less emphazing on who was telling what in the research project 
I pointed. But following a feedback from Nicolas Vigneron, I started to 
give more emphasize on who was telling what. It might not have been what 
it was expecting through it's suggestion, however, so if there is a 
problem with the way I presented the topic, it's of course all my 
responsibility, and I just give this explication to be transparent on 
how I arrived at this, not to try to transfer to responsibility on 
anyone else.


So, my point is not about a particular person, but the role they 
occupied in the decision of using exclusively CC0 as Wikidata license. 
So I'm perfectly ok with replacing "Denny Vrandečić" with "Wikidata 
leader" or whatever role title we might agree on. All the more, I'm not 
sure of his current role in the project now, and a timeline of his 
successive role he occupied regarding OmegaWiki, (maybe Semantic 
Wikipedia too?), Wikidata, and Google would be interesting to better 
grab this topic.


Because I feel like there as been rather obvious indices of possible 
conflict of interest. Now, that might be false positive indications, but 
in this case I think it would worth to completely remove any doubt about 
that. I must precise here that, as far as I'm concerned, pointing 
possible conflict of interest is not an attack on person.


Despite my attempt to emphasize that I'm not trying to harass anyone or 
call for destroying Wikidata, it seems that I fail to avoid this 
interpretations. I'm sorry, as it's really sincerely not things I'm 
attempting to do. I am also human, I make errors, I listen to people 
when they point me to behavior that they find problematic from my part, 
and I do my best to improve myself on this point.


Maybe to counter balance my statements regarding Denny Vrandečić, I feel 
deeply recognizing for its work as a whole which – with no doubt – 
brought extremely vast and valuable contributions to our community. 
While documenting on the current topic I learned a bit about him, I find 
is path interesting, and I thought here and there that it should be 
interesting to have some friendly discussion with him. I also have in 
mind to make an interview with him that I would hope to publish on 
Wikinews, as he suggested he would welcome at some point in his 
correspondence. But since I wouldn't like to make such an interview too 
focus on this current topic of license in which my mind is currently too 
occupied, I prefer to differ that for later.


You dismiss his work and opinion by stating that he now works for 
Google implying that it must have been because of his influence on the 
decision on the use of the CC-0. This happened several years after the 
decision on CC-0 and, in my opinion the fact that we were willing to 
collaborate.. on Freebase for instance, is what probably served us and 
Denny more in this. Also this decision comes from a longer history; 
for instance OmegaWiki has both CC-0 and CC-by-sa as a license because 
of the lust for endless talk on what license is "best". I do know 
about a conversation in Rome where this was discussed at length over a 
pizza.
Well, I'm all for documenting how this decision happened, so if you have 
suggestions of document I should read on the topic, this references are 
welcome. I'm all open to changing my mind based on clear references. 
Unfortunately, a discussion around a pizza won't be accessible to me 
until a breakthrough happens in what we can reliably access of reality. 
So far I went through all the threads on wikidata-l since its launch and 
IRC logs of 2014/2015 to find information on this topic, plus many other 
sources documented in the research project.




You ask for a "proof" that shows the use of CC-0 is best. The best 
proof that you are going to get is the success of Wikidata in reaching 
out widely with success and the huge amount of data that comes its 
way. What more proof do you want?
I think that any that any convincing hint able to relegate exposed 
concerns as mere delusions would be fine.


Your claim of the moral high ground fails to impress given the facts 
and there is no proof that I see that substantiates your attack on 
Denny, the implicit dismissal of his arguments and any reason why 
Wikipedifiying Wikidata will serve us better.
There is no claim of moral high ground, attempt to impress anyone, nor 
any will to personally attack anyone. The very explicit concerns of 
possible conflict of interest can and should be proven wrong if it 
indeed is.


PS You can make my contributions CC-by-sa without my consent.
No, I can't do that legally. But what you explicitly published under a 
free license, that, I can use in th

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Luca Martinelli

Il 30 nov 2017 09:55, "John Erling Blad"  ha scritto:

Please keep this civil and on topic!

I was just pointing out that CC0 wasn't forced down our throat by Silicon
Valley's Fifth Column supposed embodiment, that we actually discussed
several alternatives (ODbL included, which I saw was mentioned in the
original message of this thread) and that that several of the objections
made here were actually founded, as several other discussions happened
outside this ML confirmed.

I'm sorry if it appeared I wanted to start a brawl, it wasn't the case. For
this misunderstanding, I'm sorry.

L.
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0




Le 30/11/2017 à 02:00, Gregor Hagedorn a écrit :
I fully support CC0. The question of commercial is misleading here, 
all of Wikipedia can by used commercially under its CC BY-SA licence. 
We can all have different opinions about Google, but not that 
commercial use includes most universities and tax-exempt NGOs which 
have a business model and are not purely funded by some benefactor.
To my mind it seems obvious, but of course there is no problem with 
commercial use, and the current thread doesn't pertain to any concern 
with commercial use.


Also note, that data in many jurisdictions can be owned and withheld, 
but once published not copyrighted. CC0 simply clarifies this.
See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights on this 
point. It's not a country by country full cover, but it includes some 
hints for United States and Europe, where there are misc. monopoly of 
use granted to those who create data base.


gregor

On 30 November 2017 at 01:13, Fariz Darari > wrote:


Whatever happens behind the scenes (all those conspiracies), as
long as Wikidata can be useful to everyone (yes, incl. Google,
etc) then it does not matter.

And I believe there are still a million things we can do to make
Wikidata even more useful.

-fariz

On Nov 30, 2017 07:05, "Andra Waagmeester" mailto:an...@micelio.be>> wrote:

Here are some reasons for other resources to switch to CC0:
https://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/WikiPathways:CC0_Announcement



On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:45 PM, Mathieu Stumpf Guntz
mailto:psychosl...@culture-libre.org>> wrote:

Saluton ĉiuj,

I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta
Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page

,
because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the
community on this point. Whether you think that my view is
completely misguided or that I might have a few relevant
points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so please be
bold.

Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep
in mind that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful
project and I wish it a bright future full of even more
amazing things than what it already brung so far. My sole
concern is really a license issue.

Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

Thank you Lydia Pintscher

for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer

miss too many important points to solve all concerns which
have been raised.

Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about
where the decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata
came from. But as this inquiry on the topic


advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that
Wikidata choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny
Vrandečić, who – to make it short – is now working in the
Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth noting that
Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half the
money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's
Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]

.
To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata
is the puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies
into the realm of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more
argumentative version, please see the research project
(work in progress, only chapter 1 is in good enough shape,
and it's only available in French so far). Some proofs
that this claim is completely wrong are welcome, as it
would be great that in fact that was the community that
was the driving force behind this single license choice
and that it is the best choice for its future, not the
future of giant tech companies. This would be a great
contributio

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0


Saluton Nicolas,

Le 30/11/2017 à 00:23, Nicolas VIGNERON a écrit :

Mathieu,

I know you and like you personally, that why I can say that this mail 
is clearly not your best argument.


Despite saying multiple times this is not a manifesto nor against 
Wikidata, your mail seems clearly fuelled with biases and 
misjudgements (especially Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » 
not now that it's so widely used in Wikimedia projects, even the 
wiktionaries are *already* using Wikidata).
That's perfectly plausible that my view is fuelled with biases and 
misjudgements, and that's why I'm looking for feedback that might help 
in correcting them if needed. I prefer to expose my errors blatantly and 
seize opportunities to correct them rather than confine myself in my 
possibly misguided views.


Of course, the statement that Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » 
is shocking. Surely I'm a little provocative here. But one have to put 
that in perspective with the fact that my previous attempts to get 
feedback on this were far less provocative, or at least were aiming at 
being as unprovocative as I could do. So I recognize you are right to 
point this, all the more as I made my previous more cordial demands in 
less visible canals.


Dissecting each single phrase point by point is violent, borderline 
mean and definitely not constructive ; cross-posting this mail on 
multiple places doesn't help either. This is not the good way to 
debate peacefully.
First, if people felt personally assaulted by my message, I apologize. I 
wasn't aware that treating a topic point by point extensively could be 
perceived as such a violent behaviour. I don't want to harass anyone, I 
want to get constructive feedback on this topic from as many people of 
our community that I can get. If there are better way to achieve this 
through documented peaceful process, I would welcome references to this 
kind of documentation. And if we don't have that kind of documentation, 
I think it would be interesting that we build one.


For better or worse, Wikidata choose CC0 and it will be quite 
difficult to change the licence now (the example of licence change on 
OpenStreetMap illustrate it quite painfully).
Actually, with CC0 – if it appeared that all the data contained in 
Wikidata really can be published under CC0 – we could switch the whole 
database to whatever license we want. That was even explicitly stated as 
is at the start of the project that:


   So do I understand it correctly that during development and testing,
   we can can go with CC-0, and later relicense to whatever seems
   suitable, which is possible with CC-0?, Denny Vrandečić,
   https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata//2012-April/000185.html

But as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't suggest for such a unilateral 
move. For me, just allowing a tracking of license for each item would be 
enough.


We have to get approval of the community, there was multiple lengthy 
and non-conclusive discussions, it's not something that will be done 
with a ranting mail.
I'm interested with links to this community discussions and clear 
approval of the community.


For me, the situation is quite simple, Wikidata needs lexiographical 
data and the Wikimedia projects needs Wikidata to have these data.
I agree with that, or at least that it would be very positive for our 
community to have this kind of tools.
Nobody suggest in no way to do license laundering nor to violates 
Wiktionaries licence,
It's not suggestion, it's what Wikidata is already doing with Wikipedia, 
despite the initial statement of Wikidata team[1] that it wouldn't do 
that because it's illegal :


   /"Alexrk2, it is true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be allowed
   to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does not
   plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will
   provide data that can be reused in the Wikipedias./"
   – Denny Vrandečić
   
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata#Is_CC_the_right_license_for_data.3F

I think that the extent to which massive import without respecting 
license of the source  should be investigated properly by the Wikimedia 
legal team, or some qualified consultants.


In the mid time, based on its previous practises, it's clear that 
promises of Wikidata team regarding respect of licenses can not be 
trusted. So even if they suggested that that kind of massive import 
won't be done, it wouldn't be enough.


in fact we could simply import Public Domain sources (in the same way 
the wiktionaries did, in frwikt a big chunk of entries come from the 
/Littré/ and the /Dictionnaire de l’Académie française/, and there is 
enough dictionaries waiting in the Wikisources to keep us busy for 
years) but it would be a shame for Wikidata to not profits from 
wiktionarists expertise.
I agree with that. All the more, all this material we imported helped 
much in populating the project, but it often includes heavy biases, 
outdated definitions

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

Sorry for the sprelling errojs, my post was written on a cellphone set to
Norwegian.

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 9:55 AM, John Erling Blad  wrote:

> Please keep this civil and on topic!
>
> Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start of
> developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for CC0
> was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started working for Google.
>
> As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first week of
> april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of development. That
> must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may), as the delivery of the
> laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as I expected problems with reuse
> og external data. The arguments for CC0 convinced me.
>
> And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and Jens
> did too.
>
> Argument is pretty simple: Part A has some data A and claim license A.
> Part B has some data B and claim license B. Both license A and  license B
> are sticky, this later data C that use an aggregation of A and B must
> satisfy both license A and license B. That is not viable.
>
> Moving forward to a safe, non-sticky license seems to be the only viable
> solution, and this leads to CC0.
>
> Feel free to discuss the merrit of our choice but do not use personal
> attacs. Thank you.
>
> Den tor. 30. nov. 2017, 09.11 skrev Luca Martinelli <
> martinellil...@gmail.com>:
>
>> Oh, and by the way, ODbL was considered as a potential license, but I
>> recall that that license could have been incompatible for reuse with CC
>> BY-SA 3.0. It was actually a point of discussion with the Italian
>> OpenStreetMap community back in 2013, when I first presented at the OSM-IT
>> meeting the possibility of a collaboration between WD and OSM.
>>
>> L.
>>
>> Il 30 nov 2017 08:57, "Luca Martinelli"  ha
>> scritto:
>>
>>> I basically stopped reading this email after the first attack to Denny.
>>>
>>> I was there since the beginning, and I do recall the *extensive*
>>> discussion about what license to use. CC0 was chosen, among other things,
>>> because of the moronic EU rule about database rights, that CC 3.0 licenses
>>> didn't allow us to counter - please remember that 4.0 were still under
>>> discussion, and we couldn't afford the luxury of waiting for 4.0 to come
>>> out before publishing Wikidata.
>>>
>>> And possibly next time provide a TL;DR version of your email at the top.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> L.
>>>
>>>
>>> Il 29 nov 2017 22:46, "Mathieu Stumpf Guntz" <
>>> psychosl...@culture-libre.org> ha scritto:
>>>
 Saluton ĉiuj,

 I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
 Wiktionary User Group talk page
 ,
 because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
 point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
 might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so
 please be bold.

 Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that
 I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a
 bright future full of even more amazing things than what it already brung
 so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.

 Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

 Thank you Lydia Pintscher
  for
 taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer

 miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been 
 raised.

 Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
 decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this
 inquiry on the topic

 advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice
 toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it
 short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth
 noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
 Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
 established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft
 co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
 .
 To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the puppet
 trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm of Wikimedia.
 For a less

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

A single property licensing scheme would allow storage of data, it might or
might not allow reuse of the licensed data together with other data.
Remember that all entries in the servers might be part of an mashup with
all other entries.

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 9:55 AM, John Erling Blad  wrote:

> Please keep this civil and on topic!
>
> Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start of
> developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for CC0
> was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started working for Google.
>
> As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first week of
> april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of development. That
> must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may), as the delivery of the
> laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as I expected problems with reuse
> og external data. The arguments for CC0 convinced me.
>
> And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and Jens
> did too.
>
> Argument is pretty simple: Part A has some data A and claim license A.
> Part B has some data B and claim license B. Both license A and  license B
> are sticky, this later data C that use an aggregation of A and B must
> satisfy both license A and license B. That is not viable.
>
> Moving forward to a safe, non-sticky license seems to be the only viable
> solution, and this leads to CC0.
>
> Feel free to discuss the merrit of our choice but do not use personal
> attacs. Thank you.
>
> Den tor. 30. nov. 2017, 09.11 skrev Luca Martinelli <
> martinellil...@gmail.com>:
>
>> Oh, and by the way, ODbL was considered as a potential license, but I
>> recall that that license could have been incompatible for reuse with CC
>> BY-SA 3.0. It was actually a point of discussion with the Italian
>> OpenStreetMap community back in 2013, when I first presented at the OSM-IT
>> meeting the possibility of a collaboration between WD and OSM.
>>
>> L.
>>
>> Il 30 nov 2017 08:57, "Luca Martinelli"  ha
>> scritto:
>>
>>> I basically stopped reading this email after the first attack to Denny.
>>>
>>> I was there since the beginning, and I do recall the *extensive*
>>> discussion about what license to use. CC0 was chosen, among other things,
>>> because of the moronic EU rule about database rights, that CC 3.0 licenses
>>> didn't allow us to counter - please remember that 4.0 were still under
>>> discussion, and we couldn't afford the luxury of waiting for 4.0 to come
>>> out before publishing Wikidata.
>>>
>>> And possibly next time provide a TL;DR version of your email at the top.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> L.
>>>
>>>
>>> Il 29 nov 2017 22:46, "Mathieu Stumpf Guntz" <
>>> psychosl...@culture-libre.org> ha scritto:
>>>
 Saluton ĉiuj,

 I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
 Wiktionary User Group talk page
 ,
 because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
 point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
 might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so
 please be bold.

 Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that
 I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a
 bright future full of even more amazing things than what it already brung
 so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.

 Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

 Thank you Lydia Pintscher
  for
 taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer

 miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been 
 raised.

 Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
 decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this
 inquiry on the topic

 advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice
 toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it
 short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth
 noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
 Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
 established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft
 co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
 .
 To state it sho

Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

2017-11-30 Thread Egon Willighagen

Dear Mathieu,

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:45 PM, Mathieu Stumpf Guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

> I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
> Wiktionary User Group talk page
> ,
> because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
> point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
> might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so
> please be bold.
>
As having contributed to many open database and as user of many open
database, the CCZero is my default choice for making data open. Adoption of
this license is, IMHO, the prime reason Wikidata is growing so fast, and
integrated so fast in many use cases. License incompatibilities have been a
major concern in open source development and academic research. Yes, there
too, there is a continuous almost-religious and unsolved discussion about
copylefting, but the plain experience there is that the closer to the idea
of public domain, the easier it is to use. The advantages of CCZero have
been widely discussed in the life sciences, and while not everyone choice,
the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for many. I also note that public
domain (which CCZero formalizes across jurisdictions) is still the "ideal"
license when uploading images to Wikimedia, suggesting more of Wikimedia
actually finds the CCZero idea very welcome.

Also stress that in no way I recognize myself in your comments about Denny
and Google. And your comment that "freedom of one is murder and slavery of
others" needs some refinement, IMHO; my definition of "freedom" is quite
different and I experience your definition as abusive and offensive.

The CCZero license of Wikidata is essential to my contributions and use of
Wikimedia products. The chemistry knowledge in Wikidata is 100x more useful
(to me) than that in Wikipedia etc. That is in part because of the machine
readability, but also to a large part by the choice of CCZero.

I hope this helps,

with kind regards,

Egon

-- 
E.L. Willighagen
Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT
Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/)
Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw
Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/
PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers
ORCID: -0001-7542-0286
ImpactStory: https://impactstory.org/u/egonwillighagen
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Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0