[Search-l] Licensing thoughts...

[Nathan Braun]

"Similarly, you can dress a social agenda in GPL lace, but you can't hide
what it is -and what makes that observation interesting is that the GPL3
should make all of us re-evaluate the commitment Stallman at al are asking
us to make; and not to open source, but to their politics."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php?cat=5

Do we really want to follow GPL, Stallman and the FSF?  Shouldn't we invent
something new...here's an idea: how about a WPL:
Wikipedia Public License-- made by and for the people, that can evolve at
any time, as the people edit and renew it and revitalize it.

How about that for a change???  It seems very "Wiki-like" to me and it
follows all of our "essential values," Wikia Search organizing principles if
you will:

> 1.        Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms
operate,
> both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.
> 2.       Collaboration - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as
> individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.
> 3.       Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of
> search
> results and the searching experience.
> 4.       Privacy - "Pursuing the Holy Grail of Privacy Protection"  A
> threefold process?:

I mean: I think we can all agree that none of the existing licenses are
"perfect"--and none certainly suit and adequately and accurately represent
the Wikia/Wikipedian spirit.  They also all seem to cloak a political agenda
in legal dressing...

Maybe I'm missing something fundamental, but I think all this licensing talk
has gone far astray from its original spirit.

It has all become far too political, in my view: firmly encrusted and
encruftified with crazy-stupid jargon and dog-gone legalese.

Let's build something new, from scratch. Of the people, by the people, for
the people.  We need to liberate software from egos and agendas.

I think Matt Mullenweg captures this spirit perfectly by effectively "open
sourcing" his TOS and Privacy Statements (by releasing them under "Creative
Commons")... I mean these things are stupid enough to begin with: shouldn't
they at least be free?????

"We (the folks <http://automattic.com/about/> at
Automattic<http://automattic.com/>)
run a service called WordPress.com <http://wordpress.com/> and would
*love*for you to use it....
"(Note, we've decided to make the below Terms of Service available
under a *Creative
Commons Sharealike* license, which means you're more than welcome to steal
it and repurpose it for your own use, just make sure to replace references
to us with ones to you, and if you want we'd appreciate a link to
WordPress.com somewhere on your site. We spent a lot of money and time on
the below, and other people shouldn't need to do the same.)"
http://wordpress.com/tos/ vs. http://automattic.com/privacy/

This more closely embodies the spirit of Wikipedia (and hopefully Wikia
Search), I believe, than does the GPL, FSF and related entities...

Thoughts?

N

On 5/9/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> What Fred is describing is often known as the "web apps loophole".
>
> One solution is the Affero license, which has been endorsed by the FSF.
>
> I, too, have heard that GPL v.3 has some effect here, but I really do
> not know the current status.
>
> Another way to look at the issue:  GPL, in a web apps context, works
> very similarly to BSD is most software contexts.
>
> Nothing wrong with BSD, but it does lack this "viral" component that I
> think is essential, and since my own personal highest value around my
> dream outcome here is "quality through transparency", I like the Affero
> for what we want to do.
>
> However, I think it is a complex problem and we need to think and
> discuss slowly.


-- 
"Seriously, though, the Web is what we make of it. We have a powerful,
widely-deployed, largely uncontrolled communication network. It's up to us
to decide where to go next."
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070509/e5943235/attachment.html