[OSGeo-Edu] Free and open source your documentation efforts

[Arnulf Christl]

On Sat, October 7, 2006 22:59, watry at steam.coaps.fsu.edu wrote:
> Quoting Arnulf Christl <arnulf.christl at ccgis.de>:
> This work can not be sold as part of a commercial Product, It is
> intended for educational purposes and free exchange of information.

Well, this is what I am trying to make my point about. Free exchange of
information will not take place if commercial use is completely excluded.

> If I wanted it sold for a profit in a Commercial Environment, I would
> not post it open source on the web and use it for a free web course,
> Instead I would Package and sell it myself.

If I get it right you can do that anyway. But yet again - its not the
selling part of the course work material but the *using* part which is
interesting. What if the participants use this material without paying for
it? They pay the trainer, venue, hardware, etc. but only *use* the course
work. Is this commercial use and therefore not permitted? With the current
license I would say yes, I am not allowed to do that. Correct?

> And why should I spend all the time and effort to generate open source
> material so someone else could package it and sell it for their benefit?

Believe me - this is the most frequently asked question when we try to
explain why Free and Open Source Software licensing does work - even for
the producer.

> It was intentional about the non-commercial part.

Thats why I feel compelled to continue this discussion. :-) I believe that
the reasons that made you choose this license are noble and good but that
they actually prevent the material from getting the attention and use they
deserve.

Lets put it the other way round. What makes me (with commercial interest
and all) publish my course work under a free license? Its not that I am
stupid (I hope) but that I simply apply the FOSS licensing model which
works great to training material too. We have recently even received a
donation (€400) to enhance these docs. That is very little money but it is
more than I get out of selling the course works and it was given by a
company that does trainings and thus even are our competitors. They were
so happy to be able to use the stuff that they felt compelled to give
somethign back (they promised to also give feedack from their participants
and trainers experience and suddenly all this sounds a lot like a
colloborative software project).
Additionally I do not have to worry about not giving it away online for
fear of people taking it and not to worry about people stealing parts and
then having to remove the attribution bit so that nobody finds out that
they stole it and so on. It makes my life easier.

Having said all this I still respect your decision and want to add that it
is really great that you do this at all. So before you get pissed at me
please just forget this little detail and continue with ths great work, it
is much more than I can expect from most others.

Thanx and best regards,
Arnulf.

>> On Sat, October 7, 2006 22:01, Przemys³aw Bojczuk wrote:
>>> Arnulf Christl wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Gary,
>>>> I am wondering whether it is a good idea to restrict use of the course
>>>> data to "Noncommercial. The user may not use this work for commercial
>>>> purposes."
>>> (...)
>>>> But if you restrict course work to non-commercial use you exclude all
>>>> those fine professionals on creating new and enhancing existing
>>>> material
>>>> because they will not have any interest in producing something they
>>>> can
>>>> not use to pay their bills. On the other hand we (commercials) waste a
>>>> lot of energy producing training material that will only be use to a
>>>> few
>>>> people who can afford it. Both does not make much sense.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure which non-commercial licence you are talking about here,
>>> but for example Creative Commons NonCommercial makes a lot of sense.
>>> When you publish your work under this licence (let's say
>>> Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) it means nobody *but you* can
>>> take it and sell it, but it *doesn't* restrain you from making money
>>> from it. It means your work will be freely distributable among
>>> self-study people and university people etc., but you will still be
>>> able
>>> to print it and sell it (in any form) and make money from it.
>>
>> So it does actually not solve my problem. All commercial enterprises
>> will
>> need to prepare their own training material and not be able to share
>> what
>> has already been done. So again we are reinventing the wheel.
>> Additionally
>> no commercial enterprise will be able to tap on the stuff that has been
>> produced at universities and thus will also not enhance it. There is no
>> point in doing that.
>>
>>> So using CC NonCommercial license actually solves both problems
>>> stated in your last thought: it helps people who decide to
>>> publish their work for free to retain their copyrights and it
>>> should encourage the commercial creators to share their work with
>>> people who wouldn't pay for it anyway.
>>>
>>> I hope that clarified some things for you.
>>
>> Clarified yes, but it does not solve the problem. The non-commercial
>> restriction prevents us from getting things together as well as they
>> could. The problem is that we make money not by selling the material
>> (how
>> much will anybody pay for course material) but for the actual teaching
>> and
>> training, providing for space and infrastructure. The price that we can
>> get out of selling the course material does not pay for the work that
>> goes
>> into it.
>>
>> Probably one of the problems is that in some legislations the term
>> 'copyright' comprises both the rights of the originator of a work and
>> the
>> rights for commercial exploitation. In some legislations (most
>> Europeans)
>> there is a clear distinction which helps to clarify the rather messy
>> combined term of 'copyright'. Additionally it is not possible to strip
>> the
>> originator's 'creator' rights from his or her work, only the commercial
>> exploitation rights can be transferred to another entity.
>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Przemys³aw Bojczuk
>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Arnulf Christl
>> http://www.ccgis.de
>>
>>
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-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.ccgis.de