Choosing a good License As our intention is to help practitioners to get
open content on the ground and running, our primary interest lies in identifying those licenses used in the real world which have a proven track-record, not in crafting yet another special
license and thereby adding to the confusion. Why is it important to choose the right license from the start? There are two main aspects to choosing a good license right from the start.
Firstly, if the license does not match the requirements of prospective content authors, they may simply choose not to contribute their valuable existing or future content - which they
otherwise may have done, given the right license. For example, major issues are identification as an author and a clear indication, which modifications one is and is not responsible for.
Another concern is whether other people can “steal” the work by modifying it and then releasing it under a more restrictive license. Secondly, it is extremly difficult to subsequently
change a license once a significant amount of work has been created under a certain license. This is because it basically requires to go back to all the contributors and ask them whether they
would agree to relicense their contribution under another license. This task is simply not practical with people shifting their interest to other issues over time and changing e-mail
addresses.
For example: LDP License / Debian problem
Do unrestrictive licenses always have to be lengthy legal documents?No.
If you just want to make sure that everyone can copy your work (without changing it), you can get by with something as simple as this:
"Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved."
or
It gets more complex once the content should also be truly open to changes and further development by people other than the original creator - and accordingly, the licenses become more complex.
Who are the key stakeholders in the License issues?
Content authors
Interests include: proper attribution, renumeration for their work, citability of content
Content users
Interests include: Availability of content, citability of content
Which Open Content Licenses are out there?
Free Documentation Licenses at GNU.org Open Content Licenses at ifrOSS (Institut für Rechtsfragen
der Freien und Open Source Software) (in German)
Textual information
GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) Open Publication License 1.0 1999, at OpenContent.org
OpenContent License 1.0, 1998, at OpenContent.org
(Note that there is room for confusion here, as the OpenContent
License is occasionally also referred to as OPL. Also, The Open Publication License has different options that may be invoked by a copyright holder, some of them severely
restricting distribution. Version 2.0 is in the works and should solve these issues.)Linux Documentation Project License Public Library of Science License
Open content license for Germany and Europe: a new license that is adapted to German and European legislation (also
applies to other contents such as databases, multi-media based works, etc.) (in German)
Music
EFF Open Audio License (OAL) In recognition of different degrees of freedom musicians are willing (or able - due to contractual obligations) to bestow
on their creation, a family of different flavours of licenses has been created under the Open Music License umbrella,
which has been splitted into four different versions: Green License, Yellow License, Red License,
Rainbow License. The Personal Music License (PML)
General Content Licenses
Design Science License (DSL) - Text
Articles and websites on different licenses / legal issues
Open Content Licenses by Jan Newmarch
Intellectual Property, Open Licenses EFF: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
What are some Licenses used by Open Content Projects? In order to get a feel for which licenses have really seen practical use,
we are compiling a chart matching some open content sites with licenses. If you miss a site, please let us know.
Site |
Focus |
Content type |
Size |
Last checked |
License |
dmoz.org |
Open Web Directory |
Links |
Links to over 3 million sites |
07/2003 |
Open Directory License (Netscape) |
PublicLibraryOfSc ience.org |
Free access to scientific publications |
Scientific and medical literature |
|
07/2003 |
PLoS Open-Access License |
wikipedia.org |
Free online encyclopedia |
Text definitions with links |
139.000 entries |
07/2003 |
GFDL (Free Software Foundation) |
AsiaOSC |
Knowledge base on OS |
Information al texts, links |
|
07/2003 |
GFDL |
Book |
Subject |
Content type |
Size |
Last checked |
License |
docbook.org |
SGML, XML |
Text |
|
07/2003 |
GFDL 1.1 (FSF) |
|
