[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Evergreen documentation

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Chris Cormack <chris at bigballofwax.co.nz> wrote:
> On 4 November 2011 10:56, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hmm playing devils advocate, do you think they will respect the NC
>>> clause any more than they respected by BY-SA ?
>>>
>>
>> That's a point that was raised, and I think that the point has merit
>> -- some that would avoid attributing a BY-SA work won't respect NC --
>> but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't state our intentions and
>> desires explicitly.  The analogy that comes to mind is leaving your
>> front door unlocked and open when you go on vacation.  The door being
>> open doesn't excuse burglars from coming in and taking your TV, but
>> you bear some responsibility for not taking common-sense steps to
>> avoid the theft.
>>
> Right, so to be totally clear, the NC is there to explicitly restrict
> commercial (as fuzzy as that is) use without your prior permission,
> and the issue is not at all to do with lack of attribution?
>

Oh, it's not that we don't care about lack of attribution -- I was
intentionally vague (and will continue to be) about the set of
situations that prompted this.

But, to answer the more hairy (fuzzy?) part of your question, we would
rather restrict commercial reuse by those who are not active
participants within the community -- we see NC (with waivers) as a
stick (as in, a complement to a carrot) to protect work so that it
benefits the community primarily.  For example, a waiver of NC to the
DIG as I mentioned up-thread would cascade through the official
documentation, of course, but would primarily benefit the community
before commercial interests.  Or, that is the theory -- we're trying
to protect ourselves by being unambiguous up front, and to serve the
community both by working with active participants to make sure the
resources we produce are useful and available and that the community
benefits primarily and first.

I hope that makes sense, and doesn't sound completely crazy and off-base.

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com