Documentation and Licensing

[RichardWilliamSmith]

I was thinking about the possibility, as discussed in a recent thread, of beginning to try and create documentation as a community in a distributed way which might foreshadow the eventual implementation of federation, and may even shed light on some of the nuances of interoperability between wikis.

One issue that bubbled to the surface was that of licensing - I don't know about you but I basically consider everything I create to be issued into the world cc-by-sa by default but I don't usually bother to tell anyone in a way that they can easily check.

Do you think we should adopt a convention for easily marking our wikis so that other people know what we're happy with? I was heartened to find cc-by-sa on a few people's work here and I would really love to behave as though everything in the community carries this license without really bothering to check, but then it's only fair to give people an easy way to indicate that they are //not// cool with it.

And then... thinking further down this particular rabbit-hole raises the question of whether, in fact, individual tiddlers ought to be marked with licensing information? One can imagine it would be useful, for example, to set licensing along with authorship for tiddlers that I create myself, but allow for different settings in, say, tiddlyclip when I'm bringing over web-content. Also, at federation, if you're bringing content from my wiki, it should probably come with licensing info attached.

Regards,

Richard

[Jed Carty]

A while ago I was looking at this in the context of tiddlywiki used for creative works. One problem I ran into was that some of the free software people insisted that different parts of a single file cannot have different licenses. In their context it makes sense but it made me worry about tiddlywiki a bit. I don't expect it to cause any problems but it is something to remember. 

I was putting together a license plug-in somewhere that had a few separate options (BSA,  the various cc licenses,  etc.) and the idea is that you would pick one, the license would be added to the head element of the html and then you could remove the plug-in. 

For what you are talking about we could have a licenses tab in the sidebar that has the licenses themselves and information about which license applies to which part of the wiki, then each tiddler that has something special, like a tiddler imported from someone else, could have a license field that lists the license for that tiddler. 

For TWederation I think we will have to pay more attention to this that I have been.  

[PMario]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 8:22:40 AM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

A while ago I was looking at this in the context of tiddlywiki used for creative works. One problem I ran into was that some of the free software people insisted that different parts of a single file cannot have different licenses.

Off course it can. We do this since 10+ years. The TW text can have a different license than the core, which is BSD. Plugins have whatever the author says. ... Just because others are unable to handle it, doesn't mean it's impossible for us.

A tiddler is an entity, which can have a license. .... I don't think every tiddler should have one by default, but it would be possible. Similar to eg. SVGs, which have the possibility to include a license per SVG ...
 

In their context it makes sense but it made me worry about tiddlywiki a bit. I don't expect it to cause any problems but it is something to remember. 

We already use different licenses for TW. See: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/tree/master/licenses

especially see: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/blob/master/licenses/cla-individual.md#23-outbound-license

-m

[PMario]

I'm not a lawyer, so the following comments are my personal opinion and may be wrong!

But I did invest quite some time into the licensing topic with TW. ... I did contribute and modify the TW CLA, which is based on Harmony Project Templates.

 
On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 5:42:15 AM UTC+2, RichardWilliamSmith wrote:

One issue that bubbled to the surface was that of licensing - I don't know about you but I basically consider everything I create to be issued into the world cc-by-sa by default but I don't usually bother to tell anyone in a way that they can easily check.

Everyone who signed the TW CLA is already bound to 2 licenses for core contributions.

BSD-3-cause  for the core code and core plugins and
CC-BY for documentation related to the core and core plugins.

The TW CLA does not include 3rd party plugins / libraries and their documentation. 

 

Do you think we should adopt a convention for easily marking our wikis so that other people know what we're happy with?

Yes, and I think we already do.
 

I was heartened to find cc-by-sa on a few people's work here and I would really love to behave as though everything in the community carries this license without really bothering to check, but then it's only fair to give people an easy way to indicate that they are //not// cool with it.

 

Creative Commons dot org  is a workbench to create licenses form very restrictive to very open. IMO cc-by is very similar to MIT or BSD, since it allows every usage. You just need to mention the original author..

cc-by-sa is a moderately restrictive version in the cc family, because of the SA (share alike) which disallows commercial use, if the initial version if free of charge.

The core CC-BY is there for a reason, because TWclassic and TW5 software has always been BSD, which allows commercial use. So the core docs needed a similarly open license.
 

And then... thinking further down this particular rabbit-hole raises the question of whether, in fact, individual tiddlers ought to be marked with licensing information?

That's possible and we do it already with plugins, which are "packed" tiddlers that contain several other tiddlers. ... Every plugin author is free to use, whatever license fits for him/her. ...

IMO In our days the used license is mainly responsible for adoption.

Having the right set of licenses in the javascript ecosystem imo is important. See: https://github.com/almende/vis/issues/285#issuecomment-60355290  The visjs library changed their license and removed a component, that didn't fit, because of our (my) intervention. ... Also see: http://visjs.org/blog.html section: "A look back on vis.js" (you need to scroll down a bit)

 

One can imagine it would be useful, for example, to set licensing along with authorship for tiddlers that I create myself, but allow for different settings in, say, tiddlyclip when I'm bringing over web-content. Also, at federation, if you're bringing content from my wiki, it should probably come with licensing info attached.

As I wrote. It is possible to add a license to every tiddler. ... but YOU the author needs to manage those licenses, which imo will be close to impossible if you want to have a "per tiddler - per usecase" license.

IMO there is one very important thing with licenses. ....

 - Start with a restrictive license
 - Change it into the "free" direction, as it fits.

eg :

You can start with a very restrictive license eg: CC-BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International and loosen it afterwards.

The other way around is _not_ possible!

Everyone which has the eg: CC-BY version is allowed to use and modify that one.

have fun!
mario

[PMario]

Oh,

There is one thing I forgot. ... The easiest way to change a license, in our days is: Ask the author!

-m

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Mario,

 

Do you think we should adopt a convention for easily marking our wikis so that other people know what we're happy with?

Yes, and I think we already do.

I was thinking of, for example, a tiddler "$:/license" that could be easily set - that way when, say Jed or Tobias creates a new wiki, they can set the flag to let me know they don'y mind me re-mixing their work. I was really referring to the possible adoption of a convention of part of a distributed documentation project - I can host a version of the docs, mark it as cc-by-sa and whoever wants to can take what they like.

cc-by-sa is a moderately restrictive version in the cc family, because of the SA (share alike) which disallows commercial use, if the initial version if free of charge.

Disagree. Just because the original distribution has a price of $0.00, doesn't mean you can't remix it, however minimally, and sell it for $1. After all, there is an NC license to stop this if you care. This page - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ - specifically says that CC-BY-SA

"lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms."

I suppose it's true that there are corporations and evil super-villains who would like to take work from the public domain and put it behind a pay wall and this license is indeed "more restrictive" in the sense that it restricts them from doing so. But it is clearly more supportive of the //aims// of free content than the cc-by license alone. I suppose the reason it is possible for very intelligent people to discuss issues like this for decades is that there are no clear answers, only more questions. Which is the greater freedom, the freedom to shoot people or the freedom not to get shot?

The core CC-BY is there for a reason, because TWclassic and TW5 software has always been BSD, which allows commercial use. So the core docs needed a similarly open license.

I don't really see why the tiddlywiki docs need a license that allows people to include them as part of a commercial product, but I'm sure you came to the decision by a sensible process. Of course, the lack of a "share-alike" provision would seem to allow me to change all the images and the font and then issue my own version of the docs which is copy-right to me, since I'm free to change the license?

You can start with a very restrictive license eg: CC-BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International and loosen it afterwards.

The other way around is _not_ possible!

To be honest, thinking about this sort of stuff for any length of time makes me want to "do an Aaron" and start siphoning huge pipes of data out from behind paywalls and spraying them all over the internet, but I have to remind myself how that all ended for him. 

I nevertheless remain cc-by-sa 'til I die :)

Regards,
Richard

[Jed Carty]

I agree with Richard about cc-by-sa being the way to go with reference material. It is what I am using on the wiki reference wiki. http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/#Copyleft%20Info

As a concrete example of why a more complex structure than a single license would be needed there is the interactive fiction engine I made. Tiddlywiki itself is BSD, the engine would be cc-by-sa and any content I made on it would be cc-by-sa-nc. I want people to be able to use the authoring tools to make a living if that is possible. 

[PMario]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:49:07 PM UTC+2, RichardWilliamSmith wrote:

The core CC-BY is there for a reason, because TWclassic and TW5 software has always been BSD, which allows commercial use. So the core docs needed a similarly open license.

I don't really see why the tiddlywiki docs need a license that allows people to include them as part of a commercial product, but I'm sure you came to the decision by a sensible process. Of course, the lack of a "share-alike" provision would seem to allow me to change all the images and the font and then issue my own version of the docs which is copy-right to me, since I'm free to change the license?

You are free to change the license. That's intended. You'll need to keep links to CC-BY and BSD, but that's it. Save and sell it, if you can. ...

IMO that's also one reason, why not everything that can be part of the core, should be part of the core. IMO CC-BY-SA is perfectly fine for a community documentation project.

-m

[PMario]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 3:06:20 PM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

I agree with Richard about cc-by-sa being the way to go with reference material. It is what I am using on the wiki reference wiki. http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/#Copyleft%20Info

As a concrete example of why a more complex structure than a single license would be needed there is the interactive fiction engine I made. Tiddlywiki itself is BSD, the engine would be cc-by-sa and any content I made on it would be cc-by-sa-nc. I want people to be able to use the authoring tools to make a living if that is possible. 

That's a perfect example why the core needs to be BSD and CC-BY (or similar).

You (a content creator) need to be able to do this and core contributors expressed their "OK" by signing the CLA. You should be able to include any part of the core docs, into your content, and then change the license, if you need to, without any problem.

-m

[PMario]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:49:07 PM UTC+2, RichardWilliamSmith wrote:

You can start with a very restrictive license eg: CC-BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International and loosen it afterwards.

The other way around is _not_ possible!

To be honest, thinking about this sort of stuff for any length of time makes me want to "do an Aaron" and start siphoning huge pipes of data out from behind paywalls and spraying them all over the internet, but I have to remind myself how that all ended for him. 

It's all about "freedom". ... As a content creator I want to be free to use CC-BY-NC-ND, if I need to ;)
This content is not necessarily behind a paywall. ....

The problem I have with data behind paywalls is: if we allready paid it with our taxes, and then greedy companies are allowed to collect money again, to sell us, what is already ours. ... but that's a different topic. 
 

I nevertheless remain cc-by-sa 'til I die :)

That's a good thing :)

-m

[PMario]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:49:07 PM UTC+2, RichardWilliamSmith wrote:

 

Do you think we should adopt a convention for easily marking our wikis so that other people know what we're happy with?

Yes, and I think we already do.

I was thinking of, for example, a tiddler "$:/license" that could be easily set - that way when, say Jed or Tobias creates a new wiki, they can set the flag to let me know they don'y mind me re-mixing their work. I was really referring to the possible adoption of a convention of part of a distributed documentation project - I can host a version of the docs, mark it as cc-by-sa and whoever wants to can take what they like.

... I wish you good luck, to discuss licenses with Tobias ;) 

I wouldn't use a system tiddler. It's hidden. The license tiddler wants to clarify, what is you intention for the content your created.  So why hide it?

-------------- slightly OT

There has been some discussion at TW github issues, to make contribution easier. ... Several other big projects have adopted, an even "lighter" approach to sign their contributions. see:   https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#sign-your-work

They use a "Developer Certificate of Origin" (Which you are free to use, but not allowed to change ;) ... IMO a mechanism like this will be also thinkable. But I'm not sure, if it works without a "versioning" software of some kind.

just some more thoughts, in a different direction

-m

[Jeremy Ruston]

I like the idea of using a system tiddler for the content license and then displaying the content in a control panel tab. The reason is that the license really needs to be machine readable to be useful. With a system tiddler we can decompose the license information into individual fields, and then provide a template for a human readable view, and then transclude that template in the control panel. We could also have optional features like a way to display the license via discrete icons in the sidebar.

I’d favour $:/ContentLicense to make it clearer that it applies to the content, and not to the code or plugins.

Best wishes

Jeremy

I was thinking of, for example, a tiddler "$:/license" that could be easily set - that way when, say Jed or Tobias creates a new wiki, they can set the flag to let me know they don'y mind me re-mixing their work. I was really referring to the possible adoption of a convention of part of a distributed documentation project - I can host a version of the docs, mark it as cc-by-sa and whoever wants to can take what they like.

... I wish you good luck, to discuss licenses with Tobias ;) 

I wouldn't use a system tiddler. It's hidden. The license tiddler wants to clarify, what is you intention for the content your created.  So why hide it?

-------------- slightly OT

There has been some discussion at TW github issues, to make contribution easier. ... Several other big projects have adopted, an even "lighter" approach to sign their contributions. see:   https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#sign-your-work

They use a "Developer Certificate of Origin" (Which you are free to use, but not allowed to change ;) ... IMO a mechanism like this will be also thinkable. But I'm not sure, if it works without a "versioning" software of some kind.

just some more thoughts, in a different direction

-m

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