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

[Mike Rylander]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Cynthia Williamson
<crwbookgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi - Clearly a bunch of messages came through before I hit send on mine, I
> was intending to follow on Chris and Dan's earlier posts ...... I think we
> would all do well to remember that documentation is just documentation -
> currently valuable because it is rare but eventually it won't be so rare
> (and we all know with some searching of various lists, archives and library
> sites we can find much of what we need).
> I don't think it does anyone well to worry to much about protecting
> documentation.  I work in a college and sometimes instructors get protective
> of their content - I have shown an intro to pychology professor large
> collection of introductory psychology texts and all of the free stuff on the
> web in order to demonstrate that teachers' value to their students is
> comprised of their teaching and learning support skills - not in their
> lecture notes.  ESI and everyone who contribute to the project provide many
> invaluable services to the community - I would argue that not too much of
> that value comes from the content in documentation.  That is not to knock
> DIG either - to me, their value is in bringing the documentation into one
> place and making it findable/accessible.
>

I'm not sure we're in agreement about the value of documentation -- I
think it has great value even when plentiful -- but on the other hand
I don't think that is central to the discussion because we're not
trying to keep it secret.

The intent of adding NC isn't to keep the documentation out of the
hands of anyone, and I don't think it has that effect.  Anyone can
take the documentation, learn from it, improve it and share those
improvements.  They can take the knowledge gained and produce, say,
training materials to sell.  They just can't resell the original work.

The intent, instead, is to make sure that the Evergreen community has
full, free access to the knowledge embodied in the documentation we
produce, and indeed to make sure that the community (that is, all of
us, together, doing the work of creating Evergreen) is the primary
beneficiary of that documentation.

The focus of this thread has been on perceived negative implications
of CC with NC, which I can understand subjectively, but there are, we
believe, objective benefits to the EG community as a whole: legal
protection from predatory practices; an incentive for others to build
their (and the community's) knowledge and participate in the community
effort.  There are benefits to ESI directly, of course.  ESI is, in
essence, in the business of selling our brains -- we don't have a
packaged product, we have IP.  NC means that we can control the
for-profit sale of our IP, because in the end that is how a vendor in
an OSS community survives.

Stepping back and assuming for a moment that the DIG had a blanket
CC-BY-SA license to the documentation, and that the purpose of DIG is
to pull all available documentation together into a cohesive whole, is
there actually a problem, or do you disagree with the benefits I
listed or see them out-weighed by drawbacks?

I think it's also important to note that I see this entire
conversation as another benefit of having released our documentation
as we have.  Licensing is important, particularly for OSS and the
documentation that surrounds the source, and can be (I would argue,
should be) used to make sure that the philosophical goals of the
project.  I hope I've explained well enough how we see NC being
helpful in fulfilling the project's philosophical goal of encouraging
community participation.

-- 
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


> Cynthia
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Cynthia Williamson <crwbookgirl at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all - I don't have a new point to add here, just seeking clarification
>> and giving my 2 cents....
>> .
>> I think that Dan is right - other support vendors or anyone doing some
>> support for which they are being paid could be said to be making commercial
>> use of the documentation.
>>
>>  As Chris has suggested and Mike has acknowledged, NC won't stop those who
>> don't respect copyright from committing infringements, no measure of
>> copyright protection can do that.  If, indeed, ESI will give anyone
>> (library, other support vendor, consulting trainer ...) permission as long
>> as they ask and will give ESI credit, then I don't know why CC-by-SA won't
>> suffice.
>>
>> Regards, Cynthia
>> Mohawk College Library
>> Hamilton, ON
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:25 PM, Chris Cormack <chris at bigballofwax.co.nz>
>>> wrote:
>>> > On 4 November 2011 10:15, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
>>> >>>> Hi Sally!
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Sally Fortin
>>> >>>> <sfortin at esilibrary.com> wrote:
>>> >>>>> Friends and Colleagues,
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> Many in the Evergreen community have expressed a desire for more
>>> >>>>> documentation describing new features in Evergreen.  Others have
>>> >>>>> requested
>>> >>>>> that those who write documentation produce it in more formats,
>>> >>>>> including
>>> >>>>> asciidoc.  ESI trainers and developers have been thinking about how
>>> >>>>> to help
>>> >>>>> the Evergreen community meet its documentation needs and, to that
>>> >>>>> end, are
>>> >>>>> making some changes to the way that we produce documentation.
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> In every new development contract, the cost is inclusive of basic
>>> >>>>> end user
>>> >>>>> documentation, written by our trainers, that will be released to
>>> >>>>> the
>>> >>>>> Evergreen community.  If possible, we will release documentation in
>>> >>>>> advance
>>> >>>>> of the scheduled software release.  We will publish the
>>> >>>>> documentation on the
>>> >>>>> ESI website in both asciidoc and HTML formats to make new
>>> >>>>> documentation
>>> >>>>> accessible to the community.  Community members or DIG members can
>>> >>>>> adapt the
>>> >>>>> documentation to community or local needs in accordance with the
>>> >>>>> CC-BY-NC-SA
>>> >>>>> license that is listed on each document.  Finally, we'll make an
>>> >>>>> announcement to the community every time new documentation is
>>> >>>>> available for
>>> >>>>> download.  You can also check our blog or website for updates on
>>> >>>>> documentation.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> This sounds really great, but I have to note that the NC
>>> >>>> ("Non-commercial") clause is problematic. It is in some measure
>>> >>>> incompatible with CC-BY-SA; it restricts the use of the
>>> >>>> documentation
>>> >>>> significantly such that the DIG would probably not be able to
>>> >>>> integrate the Equinox contributions as no commercial use of the
>>> >>>> Evergreen documentation would be allowed - and the definition of
>>> >>>> what
>>> >>>> commericial use is is very fuzzy.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> For example, if a different company that offers Evergreen support
>>> >>>> distributes a copy of the Evergreen docs as part of their Evergreen
>>> >>>> support package, that could easily be defined as "commercial use";
>>> >>>> or
>>> >>>> training documentation derived from the Evergreen docs could be
>>> >>>> defined as "commercial use".
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Hopefully this is just an oversight and the real intention is to
>>> >>>> release the Equinox-derived documentation under the CC-BY-SA
>>> >>>> license.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> It's not an oversight.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> We can, certainly, grant a differently flavored license to the DIG
>>> >>> (well, the foundation, I guess) specifically, or provide explicit
>>> >>> clarification on points of concern regarding commercial use, if
>>> >>> that's
>>> >>> the only way DIG will be able to make use of the documentation we
>>> >>> produce.  But unless a licensing exception is requested (and, really,
>>> >>> all it takes is an email explaining why) we'll be defaulting to the
>>> >>> less BSD-like -NC license.
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >> I feel I should clarify the reasons for this decision.
>>> >>
>>> >> We have, in recent memory, had documentation that we produced and own
>>> >> the copyright on taken directly, rebranded to strip all mention of ESI
>>> >> -- in the content, copyright notices, everything -- and reused without
>>> >> any attribution.  This has happened more than once, and was not
>>> >> addressed even after we specifically requested that the we simply be
>>> >> credited.  Because our request for simple attribution has not been
>>> >> respected, we felt it important to make a clear and strong statement
>>> >> that, while everything we produce will be made available to the Open
>>> >> Source community for use and reuse, we (all, not just ESI) have to put
>>> >> thought explicitly into protecting our rights and being explicit about
>>> >> what we will allow by default.
>>> >>
>>> >> Again, because we own these works, we can license them to whomever we
>>> >> wish under whatever license works for any given situation -- just ask,
>>> >> and work with us, if there's no way for any particular group (DIG,
>>> >> other vendors, etc) to use NC content based on the advice of council,
>>> >> or without clarification of what constitutes commercial use based on
>>> >> our understanding and intent.
>>> >>
>>> >> Unfortunately, history has forced us to default to a stronger initial
>>> >> license than we might otherwise have chosen.
>>> >>
>>> > 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.
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Age is something that does not matter
>> unless you are a cheese."  Billie Burke
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "Age is something that does not matter
> unless you are a cheese."  Billie Burke
>
>
>