Loomio
Tue 18 Feb 2020 5:56AM

Licensing for content

P pospi Public Seen by 75

We need to make some agreements around how to license works we create. My goals are essentially to create a psychologically safe space that means:

  • All members feel free to contribute any works with full confidence that their efforts will remain in the public domain

  • All members are assured that they can adapt works undertaken in the context of this group into future contexts, projects & organisations

  • All members are assured that they will be credited on any of their works if used outside this group by another member

I've proposed CC-BY-SA as an appropriate license that I feel fits these criteria. However there may be a few alternate options to consider, or other criteria to solve for?

BH

Bob Haugen
Agree
Mon 24 Feb 2020 10:30AM

I also agree that CC-BY-SA is good for text and other document components, but not for code.

P

Poll Created Mon 24 Feb 2020 6:00AM

Consent to a CC-BY-SA license for text works created within Economikit? Closed Mon 2 Mar 2020 5:03AM

Outcome
by pospi Fri 27 Mar 2020 2:16AM

We have all agreed to a CC-BY-SA license on the material we generate together on Loomio and the website, per our revised governance process where no blocking objections have surfaced.

This currently encompasses the gitbook and all discussion undertaken in this Loomio group. Any future additions to the scope in which the license is applied should be discussed as they arise (eg. collaboration on project-specific governance documentation).

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 100.0% 5 BH LF P E SS
Abstain 0.0% 0  
Disagree 0.0% 0  
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 6 T JMR NT FI C CB

5 of 11 people have participated (45%)

P

pospi Mon 2 Mar 2020 11:45PM

It looks like we have close to agreement on this. I'm going to count this comment as a "yes" vote @Noah Thorp (;

  • @Carolyn Beer hasn't voted but has also just joined, feels OK to go ahead as she has not yet submitted any content to the gitbook. @c & @Ferananda Ibarra have also not voted nor been very active, presuming this is OK to move forward as well?

  • No vote from @Jean Russell - can I get you to confirm a "yes"?

  • Unclear if @Tom intends to continue participating or not- if he does, I will need a vote.

  • @Samuel Rose has bowed out for now as he is already over-committed on other stuff. Will rejoin when he feels it's important to re-engage.

NT

Noah Thorp Tue 18 Feb 2020 11:49PM

For text content CC-BY-SA works for me. I would recommend code contributions be governed by each repo's license separately - as they are already.

JMR

jean m russell Thu 20 Feb 2020 8:16PM

We agree to view this through membranes, right?

  • I like the abstract direction that @Sid Sthalekar points to as a general practice to aim for throughout the Economikit ecosystem. More public - more about reputation. More privately held - more about returns.

  • And, I agree that each project lives within its own license, as @pospi suggested and I believe @Noah Thorp is confirming by saying the software has license.

  • Within the material that we together co-create - this membrane we share together (specifically loomio, cryptopad, our calls etc), any work there is by the license above. √

P

pospi Wed 19 Feb 2020 4:59AM

Not sure what you mean by "microservices" but I think I should clarify. I'm not talking about IP already ongoing under the umbrella of other projects (e.g. Sacred Capital, Holo-REA, CommonsEngine's data commons)... as far as I'm concerned, anything going on there is up to each individual to govern. No impositions from me! (yet)

I define "things created for Economikit" as work we contribute specifically to this collective repository of knowledge. At the moment, that's the gitbook and this Loomio, and maybe a couple of Cryptpads that have been loosely used to coordinate (though, probably unlisted documents should be treated as private by default until explicit agreement is made to publish them).

Does that help to clarify?

NT

Noah Thorp Wed 19 Feb 2020 1:40AM

I don't think that creative commons licenses are appropriate for software code. Open source software should be licensed under AGPL, GPL, MIT, Apache 2 etc to handle liability, linking and in some cases patent issues that aren't generally applicable in "content" like text and images.

SS

Sid Sthalekar Wed 19 Feb 2020 1:34AM

Yeah, good point. I guess the risk is we'll have the open source projects rolling ahead with this license, but it would restrict any development of micro-services for eg. Maybe we could create an in-faith-understanding within the group for such projects? That wouldn't be any administrative overload.

P

pospi Tue 18 Feb 2020 10:57PM

My goal at present is for a simple "pen and paper" arrangement that lets us move forward easily with tools that already exist. Broadly agree with the ideas discussed above, but such systems will require a lot of time, energy & engagement with external stakeholders to create.

SS

Sid Sthalekar Tue 18 Feb 2020 6:33AM

Glad you started this thread.This could tie in with the debate around Open-source vs Privately held. Maybe there's a more nuanced middle ground that can be revealed through Data Commons?

I think of it as an underlying multi-dimensional fabric that can reward contributors in different ways (monetary if needed + reputation i.e. credit). This encourages people to fork existing projects, while original contributors continue to receive rewards.

Within this spectrum, completely public creations would receive only reputational rewards, while those that are private can be packaged as micro-services to generate a monetary stream.

We've been thinking about this as a foundation for Neighbourhoods. If there's interest we could expand this to the collective.