CZ:License Essays/Robert King

Citizendium License Essay

by Robert King

The most significant measure to determining the future of Citizendium is the selection of an appropriate content license. It is therefore extremely important to consider selecting a license that not only ensures our longevity, but also places us in a position of "good standing" within our respective wiki communities. The fact that we are relatively "new" gives us the advantage of mulling over the current existing licenses. Mike Johnson made a good point in noting that WikiPedia chose the GFDL in a state of "fight or flight"; we have luxury of not being in that situation.

Case for and Against Creative Commons

All CC-by licenses are based on copyright. However, CC licenses do not give you the ability to restrict exceptions or limitations, e.g. fair use. (see here) In fact, CC licenses are not a replacement for copyright. I believe this is one of two death blows to the idea of using CC solely to license our content. The other is that past version 1.0 of all CC licenses, there are no warranties whatsoever and that the inherent idea promoted by the commons is that "warranties and indemnities are best determined separately by private bargain." (See question: "Does using a Creative Commons-licensed work give me all the rights I need?")

That said, the limitations that CC provides to us are beneficial, should we opt to use them. The four provisions of CC licenses are:

• Attribution: you must attribute the author and/or licensor in the manner they require. That means roughly that should we use this provision, we can specify *how* we are to be attributed for efforts produced.

• NonCommercial: work may not be used in a way to attained commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The real concern with NonCommercial provisions are that "commercial advantage" or "private monetary compensation" might have to be defined. However, should any work that is marked NonCommercial be used for advantage or compensation we reserve the right to collect statutory royalties or royalties under compulsory licenses for commercial uses.

• NoDerivates: The work must be kept in original form, verbatim. Adaptations or changes may not be made.

• ShareAlike: Derivates may be made only if you license them under the same terms.

Given these, with the addition of a Founders' Copyright, or combination with a second open-license, may provide us with a stable-yet-flexible liscensing solution.

Why Dual License?

Although it may be easier to evaluate the community's concerns and pick a license that suits the lowest common denominator amongst those concerns, dual licensing allows us to get the best of both worlds in the sense that we have one "free licensing" scheme and one "commercial" licensing scheme, which fills in the gaps that the free licensing scheme has.

Additionally, since the project's inception (and post-WP) a multitude of licensing schemes have come into existence, some having real tangible benefits that others may not have. It is expected that one single license will not cover all issues and concerns of the community.

Uncharted Territory

There is some amount of mysterious voodoo involved with dual liscensing(hereafter referred to as DL) (wp link). The first impression one might get is that DL is solely reserved for business software development. DL schemes focus on the licensing of "product" and the returned benefit of that licensing.

In January of 2003, Mikko Valimaki wrote a paper on "Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Industry" that is a case study of three companies which use DL for one product: Sleepycat Software Inc., MySQL AB, and TrollTech AS. He makes observations about DL models, that could be put into the context of CZ vs WP:

• The "development community" does not have the "development power" to start "competing products(forks)".

• The users of the free license have an option to obtain a proprietary(commercial) license.

In our comparison, we know that CZ(the community) currently does not have the same volume of users or articles(power) to be absolutely competitive with WP, and that we should have the capability to put our work in a "commercial" context--that is, how to ensure that the product we license retains its value in our community through the licensing scheme.

Case Studies

There are two questions and conclusions that were asked of and reached about each company that decided to use a DL scheme:

• To the question, when did the companies develop their DL model, the answer turned out to be that none of them started off that way--it evolved into it.
• To the question, what licenses do the companies use and for what reasons, he notes that the companies while using different free software licenses, they all contain a strong "copyleft" clause limiting the commercial usage.

Each case study ends up with the same ultimate model; one such that any third party that uses the PL version of their product must be licensed under the same scheme. If the third party is unable to comply, they must opt for a commercial license.

CZ's goal is to develop a better, free encyclopia and as such should anyone want to use our material, we should retain the rights (of the material that belongs to us) and should it be attributed and not used for gain. If it is to be used for gain, then we should have an explicit license that deals with said issues. This is similar in idea to the 1.0 version of the Commons liscenses, except that it rejects the idea of negotiating exceptions to the license on an "ad-hoc" basis.

In the case examples, using a copyleft meant that the distrubtion terms of the "source" must be maintained even if it is modified along the way(attribution, derivative). If the "source" is distributed free of charge, then no other entity should benefit from the "source" later in any change, as there is a fundamental legal requirement that the "company" has undisputed rights to the "product" it wishes to DL. There are two stipulations for companies that wish to clear rights from companies that use copyleft licenses:

• either the "software" must be rewritten or
• rights must be obtained with a license term or specific contract.

The first is a lot of work, but avoids the tribulations of copyright infringement and is the safest legal option. The second implies that the stipulations of the license must be followed.

Economic Variables

There are two economic variables that go into DL. The first is that there must be a "sufficiently large user base" for the "product". To elaborate, the value of the product to the individual depends on the number of users of the product.

The second is the effectiveness of DL depends on "price discrimination" (in this case, value). Obviously, if there is a demand for a product("articles on CZ"), then it makes sense that we should liscense it according to this demand.

The Short Version

• Prevents direct-copy without attribution
• Ensures attribution for all current and future derivatives of work
• Retains rights and the ability to enforce those rights
• Would fit neatly into the model of attributing the individual user for the amount of contribution (should we choose to do so)
• commercial license would already exist for future potential tangible market product release (very down-the-line)
• avoids the trap of previous versions not being eligable to have a different license
• supports the idea of self-value to the community
• plays nicely with importing content currently under free licenses