gregor
On 30 November 2017 at 01:13, Fariz Darari <fadi...@gmail.com
<mailto:fadi...@gmail.com>> 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" <an...@micelio.be
<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
<https://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/WikiPathways:CC0_Announcement>
On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:45 PM, Mathieu Stumpf Guntz
<psychosl...@culture-libre.org
<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
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#An_answer_to_Lydia_general_thinking_about_Wikidata_and_CC-0>,
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
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29>
for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0>
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
<https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_origine_du_choix,_enjeux,_et_prospections_sur_les_aspects_de_gouvernance_communautaire_et_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9quit%C3%A9_contributive>
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]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-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*/
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/Endorsement#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 processing point of view,
everything is data. Whether it's stored in a
wikisyntax, in a relational database or engraved in
stone only have a commodity side effect. Whether it's
a random stream of bit generated by a dumb chipset or
some encoded prose of Shakespeare make no difference.
So from this point of view, no, what Wikidata store is
not different from what is produced anywhere else in
Wikimedia projects.
Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many
things. But this is not because it's data, when
elsewhere there would be no data. It's because it
enforce data to be stored in a way that ease
aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and so
on.
Our data lives from being able to write queries over
millions of statements, putting it into a mobile app,
visualizing parts of it on a map and much more.
Sure. It also lives from being curated from
millions[2]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-2>
of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a
useless pile of random bytes.
This means, if we require attribution, in a huge number of
cases attribution would need to go back to potentially
millions of editors and sources (even if that data is not
visible in the end result but only helped to get the result).
No, it doesn't mean that.
First let's recall a few basics as it seems the whole
answer makes confusion between attribution and
distribution of contributions under the same license
as the original. Attribution is crucial for
traceability and so for reliable and trusted knowledge
that we are targeting within the Wikimedia movement.
The "same license" is the sole legal guaranty of
equity contributors have. That's it, trusted knowledge
and equity are requirements for the Wikimedia movement
goals. That means withdrawing this requirements is
withdrawing this goals.
Now, what would be the additional cost of storing
sources in Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's
already here as the "reference" attribute is part of
the Wikibase item structure. So attribution is not a
problem, you don't have to put it in front of your
derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article: until
you go to history, you have zero attribution visible,
and it's ok. It's also have probably zero or
negligible computing cost, as it doesn't have to be
included in all computations, it just need to be
retrievable on demand.
What would be the additional cost of storing licenses
for each item based on its source? Well, adding a
license attribute might help, but actually if your
reference is a work item, I guess it might comes with
a "license" statement, so zero additional cost. Now
for letting user specify under which free licenses
they publish their work, that would just require an
additional attribute, a ridiculous weight when
balanced with equity concerns it resolves.
Could that prevent some uses for some actors? Yes,
that's actually the point, preventing abuse of those
who doesn't want to act equitably. For all other
actors a "distribute under same condition" is fine.
This is potentially computationally hard to do and and
depending on where the data is used very inconvenient
(think of a map with hundreds of data points in a mobile
app).
OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive
license, do exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way,
allowing a license by item would enable to include
OpenStreetMap data in WikiData, which is currently
impossible due to the CC0 single license policy of the
project. Too bad, it could be so useful to have this
data accessible for Wikimedia projects, but who cares?
This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to
impose on them.
Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that
Wikidata would care first of re-users which are in the
phase with Wikimedia goal, so surely needs of
Wikimedia community in particular and Free/Libre
Culture in general should be considered. Do this
re-users would be penalized by a copyleft license?
Surely no, or they wouldn't use it extensively as they
do. So who are this re-users for who it's thought
preferable, without consulting the community, to not
annoy with questions of equity and traceability?
It would make it significantly harder to re-use our data
and be in direct conflict with our goal of spreading
knowledge.
No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a
button on a computer to do that rather than this. What
is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goals
emerging from the 2017 community consultation is going
against equity and traceability. You propose to
discard both to satisfy exogenous demands which should
have next to no weight in decision impacting so deeply
the future of our community.
Whether data can be protected in this way at all or not
depends on the jurisdiction we are talking about. See this
Wikilegal on on database rights
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights>
for more details.
It says basically that it's applicable in United
States and Europe on different legal bases and
extents. And for the rest of the world, it doesn't say
it doesn't say nothing can apply, it states nothing.
So even if we would have decided to require attribution it
would only be enforceable in some jurisdictions.
What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be
applicable in some country, so let's withdraw the few
rights we have.
Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also
unfortunately often means that people refrain from what
they want to to for fear of legal repercussions. This is
directly in conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge.
Economic inequality, social inequity and legal
imbalance might also refrain people from doing what
they want, as they fear practical repercussions. CC0
strengthen this discrimination factors by enforcing
people to withdraw the few rights they have to weight
against the growing asymmetry that social structures
are concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique license
choice is in direct conflict with our goal of
*equitably* spreading knowledge.
Also it seems like this statement suggest that
releasing our contributions only under CC0 is the sole
solution to diminish legal doubts. Actually any well
written license would do an equal job regarding this
point, including many copyleft licenses out there. So
while associate a clear license to each data item
might indeed diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an
argument at all for enforcing CC0 as sole license
available to contributors.
Moreover, just putting a license side by side with a
work does not ensure that the person who made the
association was legally allowed to do so. To have a
better confidence in the legitimacy of a statement
that a work is covered by a certain license, there is
once again a traceability requirement. For example,
Wikidata currently include many items which were
imported from misc. Wikipedia versions, and claim that
the derived work obtained – a set of items and
statements – is under CC0. That is a hugely doubtful
statement and it alarmingly looks like license
laundering
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>.
This is true for Wikipedia, but it's also true for any
source on which a large scale extraction and import
are operated, whether through bots or crowd sourcing.
So the Wikidata project is currently extremely
misplaced to give lessons on legal ambiguity, as it
heavily plays with legal blur and the hope that its
shady practises won't fall under too much scrutiny.
Licenses that require attribution are often used as a way
to try to make it harder for big companies to profit from
openly available resources.
No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to
make it harder for big companies to profit from openly
available resources/ *in inequitable manners*. That's
completely different. Copyleft licenses give the same
rights to big companies and individuals in a manner
that lower socio-economic inequalities which
disproportionally advantage the former.
The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working.
Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend,
so of course it's not working for this goal. But for
the goal that copyleft licenses aims at, there are
clear evidences that yes it works.
Big companies have the legal and engineering resources to
handle both the legal minefield and the technical hurdles
easily.
There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war
material analogy is disrespectful. That's true that
copyleft licenses might come with some constraints
that non-copyleft free licenses don't have, but that
the price for fostering equity. And it's a low price,
that even individuals can manage, it might require a
very little extra time on legal considerations, but on
the other hand using the free work is an immensely
vast gain that worth it. In Why you shouldn't use the
Lesser GPL for your next library
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is
stated /proprietary software developers have the
advantage of money; free software developers need to
make advantages for each other/. This might be
generalised as /big companies have the advantage of
money; free/libre culture contributors need to make
advantages for each other/. So at odd with what
pretend this fallacious claims against copyleft
licenses, they are not a "minefield and the technical
hurdles" that only big companies can handle. All the
more, let's recall who financed the initial
development of Wikidata: only actors which are related
to big companies.
Who it is really hurting is the smaller start-up,
institution or hacker who can not deal with it.
If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then
this is just plainly false. Smaller actors have more
to gain in preserving mutual benefit of the common
ecosystem that a copyleft license fosters.
With Wikidata we are making structured data about the
world available for everyone.
And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole
license to be achieved.
We are leveling the playing field to give those who
currently don’t have access to the knowledge graphs of the
big companies a chance to build something amazing.
And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole
license. Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable
project on this point, as it allows unfair actors to
take it all, add some interesting added value that our
community can not afford, reach/reinforce an hegemonic
position in the ecosystem with their own closed
solution. And, ta ta, Wikidata can be discontinued
quietly, just like Google did with the defunct
Freebase which was CC-BY-SA before they bought the
company that was running it, and after they imported
it under CC0 in Wikidata as a new attempt to gather a
larger community of free curators. And when it will
have performed license laundering of all Wikimedia
projects works with shady mass extract and import,
Wikimedia can disappear as well. Of course big
companies benefits more of this possibilities than
actors with smaller financial support and no hegemonic
position.
Thereby we are helping more people get access to knowledge
from more places than just the few big ones.
No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies
to reinforce their position in which they can
distribute information manipulated as they wish,
without consideration for traceability and equity
considerations. Allowing contributors to also use
copyleft licenses would be far more effective to
/collect and use different forms of free, trusted
knowledge/ that /focus efforts on the knowledge and
communities that have been left out by structures of
power and privilege/, as stated in /Our strategic
direction: Service and Equity/.
CC-0 is becoming more and more common.
Just like economic inequality
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>.
But that is not what we are aiming to foster in the
Wikimedia movement.
Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and
are happy with the experience. Among them are the European
Union, Europeana, the National Library of Sweden and the
Metropolitan Museum of Modern Arts.
Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia
community, they have their own goals and plan to be
sustainable that does not necessarily meet what our
community can follow. Different contexts require
different means. States and their institutions can
count on tax revenue, and if taxpayers ends up in
public domain works, that's great and seems fair.
States are rarely threatened by companies, they have
legal lever to pressure that kind of entity, although
conflict of interest and lobbying can of course
mitigate this statement.
Importing that kind of data with proper attribution
and license is fine, be it CC0 or any other free
license. But that's not an argument in favour of
enforcing on benevolent a systematic withdraw of all
their rights as single option to contribute.
All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our
data to give attribution to Wikidata because we believe it
is in the interest of all parties involved.
That's it, zero legal hope of equity.
And our experience shows that many of our re-users do give
credit to Wikidata even if they are not forced to.
Experience also show that some prominent actors like
Google won't credit the Wikimedia community anymore
when generating directly answer based on, inter alia,
information coming from Wikidata, which is itself
performing license laundering of Wikipedia data.
Are there no downsides to this? No, of course not. Some
people chose not to participate, some data can't be
imported and some re-users do not attribute us. But the
benefits I have seen over the years for Wikidata and the
larger open knowledge ecosystem far outweigh them.
This should at least backed with some solid statistics
that it had a positive impact in term of audience and
contribution in Wikimedia project as a whole. Maybe
the introduction of Wikidata did have a positive
effect on the evolution of total number of
contributors, or maybe so far it has no significant
correlative effect, or maybe it is correlative with a
decrease of the total number of active contributors.
Some plots would be interesting here. Mere personal
feelings of benefits and hindrances means nothing
here, mine included of course.
Plus, there is not even the beginning of an attempt to
A/B test with a second Wikibase instant that allow
users to select which licenses its contributions are
released under, so there is no possible way to state
anything backed on relevant comparison. The fact that
they are some people satisfied with the current state
of things doesn't mean they would not be even more
satisfied with a more equitable solution that allows
contributors to chose a free license set for their
publications. All the more this is all about the
sustainability and fostering of our community and
reaching its goals, not immediate feeling of
satisfaction for some people.
*
[1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op-ed>
*
[2] according to the next statement of Lydia
Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against
Wikidata. The motivation behind this message is a hope
that one day one might participate in Wikidata with the
same respect for equity and traceability that is granted
in other Wikimedia projects.
Kun multe da vikiamo,
mathieu
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--
Dr. Gregor Hagedorn
Akademischer Direktor am MfN
Leidenschaft und Kompetenz FÜR NATUR
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
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CURRENT LYRICS: Gerhard Gundermann
1. Halte durch
Halte durch, wenn's irgendwie geht
Bist doch 'ne kluge Frau
Bist doch 'n erfahr'ner Planet
Wir machen dich zur Sau!
Adam hat nach dem Apfel geblickt
Du hast ihn freundlich rausgerückt
Wir hab'n uns auf dir breit gemacht
Am Anfang hast du noch gelacht.
Wir hab'n von unsern hohen Rossen
Die Wildbahn zum Highway freigeschossen
Flora ist schon fast k.o.
Fauna stirbt in irgendeinem Zoo.
Halte durch, wenn's irgendwie geht
Bist doch 'ne kluge Frau
Bist doch 'n erfahr'ner Planet
Wir machen dich zur Sau!
Wir hab'n den Amazonaswald zersägt
Zur Strafe hast du Afrika das Wasser abgedreht
Ach Mama, das ist doch die falsche Adresse
Das Abendland braucht's auf die Fresse.
Du musst uns solange schlagen
Bis wir lernen bitte zu sagen
Bis wir stolz und glücklich sind
Mit 'm Apfel und 'm Ei und 'm warmen Wind.
Halte durch, wenn's irgendwie geht
Bist doch 'ne kluge Frau
Bist doch 'n erfahr'ner Planet
Wir machen dich zur Sau!
Was kann ich für dich tun, ich weiß es nicht
Bin zwar 'n grünes, doch 'n kleines Licht
Und bin auch ein feindlicher Soldat
Der schon von deiner Haut gefressen hat.
Ich steh gegen dich an der Front
Überlaufen hab ich noch nicht gekonnt
Doch ich bin dein treuer Sohn
Irgendwann, da komm ich schon.
Halte durch, wenn's irgendwie geht ...
2. Gras
Als wir endlich groß genug warn
nahm'n wir uns're Schuh,
die bemalte Kinderzimmertür
fiel hinter uns zu.
Vater gab uns seinen Mantel
und sein blauen Hut,
Mutter gab uns ihre Tränen
und machte uns ein Zuckerbrot.
Immer wieder wächst das Gras,
wild und hoch und grün,
bis die Sensen ohne Haß ihre Kreise ziehn,
immer wieder wächst das Gras,
klammert all die Wunden zu,
manchmal stark und manchmal blaß,
so wie ich und du.
Als wir endlich alt genug warn
stopften wir sie in den Schrank,
die allzu oft geflickten Flügel,
und Gott sagte, Gottseidank.
Und nachts macht diese Stadt
über uns die Luken dicht,
und wer den Kopp zu weit oben hat,
der find' seine Ruhe nicht.
Immer wieder wächst das Gras ...
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