TiddlyWiki, licensing and creative works

[Jed Carty]

Working on the resume builder edition has made me think about tiddlywiki and licensing in the context of an extensible single page application. From what I have seen none of the existing software licenses cover the cases of a plugin architecture in a single page application. For most current plugins the authors seem to be at least comfortable with the idea of their work being free software, I think this is a good thing and, if a license is needed, I want plugins I make to have a permissive license.

The problem as I see it comes in when you consider that TiddlyWiki can be used to make creative works where there should be some distinction between tiddlywiki as the container and the content created. The license currently says

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

which, as far as the TiddlyWiki core itself is concerned is a good thing in my opinion. But in the case of the resume builder, since tiddlywiki is a single page application, the license would apply to the content (your resume) as well which is probably not a desirable situation. For the resume builder this isn't really a problem because it would most likely be used offline and the output would presumably be a pdf which wouldn't be subject to the same license, but for something like the interactive fiction engine I made there isn't any way using the currently available software licenses to make a distinction between the tool and a game that someone makes using the tool. I would like TiddlyWiki to be usable as an authoring tool for creative content, and I would like the authors of that content to be able to use their work in a commercial context, but unless some distinction is made between tiddlywiki and content created using tiddlywiki than that isn't practical.

I think that it would make sense in terms of creative control to be able to distinguish between the tiddlywiki core, plugins, and wiki content for the purposes of licensing.

This also comes up because, while I don't think that it really grants or removes any user rights compared to those given by the tiddlywiki license, I would like to give the content of the wiki reference wiki a creative commons license just so there isn't any question about people being able to use or copy what I put on it.

I don't think that we have anyone who is familiar with the legal issues surrounding this, but if anyone does know I would be interested to hear about if separating the different parts of tiddlywiki like this would be possible.

I wrote some other thoughts about this and the problems making a distinction between the different parts of tiddlywiki here.

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Jed

I think you are onto something important here. You're right that the way that the core license appears at the moment gives it the apparent scope of the entire file, including the content. So, I'd agree that there's a potential issue here; we won't make things worse by not doing anything, but there is a good opportunity to try to make things better.

I wonder whether there is any kind of precedent from the pre-digital age. Perhaps a book that includes blank spaces that are explicitly intended for the reader/user to write their own content, like a baby book for parents to fill in the details of their child. Presumably the copyright in the illustrations and pre-printed text would be independent of the users copyright in their own content.

I like the idea of prompting users to select a license for their content, and and then baking their choice into the head of the HTML file.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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[BJ]

Maybe you can add that it only applies to the files tagged with the release as appears in github - that would clearly define the limits.

[Jed Carty]

BJ,

That would work better than anything I have come up with, but there are still some problems. Like the tiddlers $:/SiteTitle and $:/SiteSubtitle where it wouldn't be unreasonable to put something that has a different license. Now that I am thinking about it every example I can come up with as a potential problem could be avoided using transclusions.

I think that if possible adding an exemption for modifications made to tiddlers using built-in modification mechanisms like $:/SiteTitle and $:/SiteSubtitle should be included. That would just be for a situation like someone writing and publishing a book in TiddlyWiki not having to worry about if they still have the copyright for their title when they put it in $:/SiteTitle.

I guess plugins are easy to define as the shadow tiddlers included in the plugin and modifications of those tiddlers would be dealt with however the license for the plugin states. Plugins that modify the tiddlers tagged as the release on github would be modifying them so that is covered by the tiddlywiki license and if an author really wanted to use a separate license they could split their plugin into two parts, one with the core modifications and one with only the parts that they created with whatever license they choose. Anything else could be considered wiki content and would have whatever license the user gives it. I think that if we can make these distinctions than each tiddler could have its own license in the extreme case.

Jeremy,

I will look around a bit to see if I can find anything like that. That sort of precedent would make this much easier.

[PMario]

Hi Jed,

TLDR; I think there is no big problem. ... Just add a License tiddler to your resume edition.

The details follow :)

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 9:03:01 PM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

Working on the resume builder edition has made me think about tiddlywiki and licensing in the context of an extensible single page application. From what I have seen none of the existing software licenses cover the cases of a plugin architecture in a single page application.

That's not really true.

If you have a look at the TW5 CLA license section: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/blob/master/licenses/cla-individual.md#2-grant-of-rights, there are some parts the may be interesting.

For tiddlywiki.com we already use 2 different types of license for the TiddlyWiki core and the TW content. see: Outbound License

 - the core is BSD
 - the content is CC-BY

So while on tiddlywiki.com, this is not stated (which imo need sot be changed), every user that contributes to TW and signed the CLA creates TW content with CC-BY.

For most current plugins the authors seem to be at least comfortable with the idea of their work being free software, I think this is a good thing and, if a license is needed, I want plugins I make to have a permissive license.

Every TW plugin can have there own license: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/blob/master/licenses/cla-individual.md#27-3rd-party-libraries-and-plugins 

This license can be seen in the ControlPanel: Plugins section. If you click the ">" more icon with the library, you should see at least a "readme" and / or a "license" tab. (just checked it at tw.com, where we need to fix it :)

The plugin author can set the license, to what ever they want. ... Where MIT and BSD and some CC licenses are easy to handle for us. For plugins everything else may cause problems depending on the use case.

The problem as I see it comes in when you consider that TiddlyWiki can be used to make creative works where there should be some distinction between tiddlywiki as the container and the content created. The license currently says

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

For TW, imo redistribution in source and binary format are kind of the same, since HTML is source and binary format at the same time.

If you open tiddlywiki.com and "right click": View Source, you will see, that at the very top you get the TW BSD core license. .... So If you don't remove this section by hand from the HTML file, you are good to go.

As I wrote above. Every plugin, has its own section to display the license. <- You as the creator of your edition have to take care, that you don't use plugins and 3rd party libraries, that don't fit your usecase. ... So if you want to use your content commercially, you need to be sure, that the plugins you use allow you, to do so. ... For most of our existing stuff, this is no problem. ..... atm.


IMO most library authors are very responsive to licensing feedback. ... So if something doesn't fit your needs, just ask them.

See: http://visjs.org/blog.html - A look back on vis.js from January ..... They added MIT license after we informed them, about our problem, with the existing license.

 

which, as far as the TiddlyWiki core itself is concerned is a good thing in my opinion. But in the case of the resume builder, since tiddlywiki is a single page application, the license would apply to the content (your esume) as well which is probably not a desirable situation.

That's right but imo no problem. .. Just add a License tiddler to your Resume, that says, what you want.
 

For the resume builder this isn't really a problem because it would most likely be used offline and the output would presumably be a pdf which wouldn't be subject to the same license, but for something like the interactive fiction engine I made there isn't any way using the currently available software licenses to make a distinction between the tool and a game that someone makes using the tool. I would like TiddlyWiki to be usable as an authoring tool for creative content, and I would like the authors of that content to be able to use their work in a commercial context, but unless some distinction is made between tiddlywiki and content created using tiddlywiki than that isn't practical.

IMO also no problem. ... If you want every tiddler can have its own license field (may be images). This may be overkill, but possible. ... You just need to take care, that your plugins have the right licenses.
 

I think that it would make sense in terms of creative control to be able to distinguish between the tiddlywiki core, plugins, and wiki content for the purposes of licensing.

IMO we do this already. See my other comments.

 

This also comes up because, while I don't think that it really grants or removes any user rights compared to those given by the tiddlywiki license, I would like to give the content of the wiki reference wiki a creative commons license just so there isn't any question about people being able to use or copy what I put on it.

As I wrote. Just add a License tiddler with some content like this: (just a suggestion)

The content of this edition is licensed: eg: CC-BY-SA

TiddlyWiki core is BSD licensed
Additional Plugin Licenses can be found at the [[Control Panel|$:/ControlPanel]]


(For the TW core, the license tab is missing atm. IMO I'll create an issue for this. but the link to github should be fine. )

 

I don't think that we have anyone who is familiar with the legal issues surrounding this, but if anyone does know I would be interested to hear about if separating the different parts of tiddlywiki like this would be possible.

I'm not a Lawyer, so everything that I wrote may be wrong.

The system that we used to create the TW CLA is: Project Harmony - http://www.harmonyagreements.org/
The system I use to create CC licenses is: http://creativecommons.org/choose/

There is a github issue discussion about our CLA and may be future changes. But I think we have pretty solid system atm.
 

I wrote some other thoughts about this and the problems making a distinction between the different parts of tiddlywiki here.

I can't access the link.


hope that helps
mario

[BJ]

It is not so much about what tiddlers are used (although having shadow tiddlers helps us identify what is used), but being clear about what is covered - i.e. if you cannot find a piece of javascript in the github repository then it is not covered by the license. If you use tiddlers names that are not tw5 shadow tiddlers then it makes it easy to argue about what is not covered (or not intended to be covered) by the license.

[PMario]

As I wrote and as Jed stated: "I think that if we can make these distinctions than each tiddler could have its own license in the extreme case." ... but this may be overkill for most usecases.

It is relatively easy to identify where the content comes from eg: 

 - download an empty.html
 - drag and drop import an empty-edition.html
   - All tiddlers, that show up here are different to emtpy.html ...
     - plugins are bound to the plugin license
     - edition content is bound to the edition license.

 - If a end-user wants to know, what he modified, s/he just needs to import the active TW into empty-edition.html.
   - Every tiddler, that shows up now, is user created content and belongs to the user. ... IF the edition license allows this!

-----------

I think that if possible adding an exemption for modifications made to tiddlers using built-in modification mechanisms like $:/SiteTitle and $:/SiteSubtitle should be included. That would just be for a situation like someone writing and publishing a book in TiddlyWiki not having to worry about if they still have the copyright for their title when they put it in $:/SiteTitle.

IMO no need for an exemption.

If I change the site title from TiddlyWiki to "My Freaking Awesome Novel" I physically create a copy of the $:/SiteTitle tiddler. ...
 - Since this core tiddler is BSD licensed, I don't need to ask for permission to change it.
 - Since I did create the new content, it automatically is my copyright.
 - This is valid for every other system tiddler.
 - Every tiddler has a creator and modifier field, if the $:/status/UserName in the ControlPanel is set. So it is relatively easy to see, who "owns" the tiddler :)


BSD license allows me to change everything, if I leave the original license text in tact.
BSD has no "share alike" section like CC-BY-SA, GPL, Apache .. and others. .. So everything I changed can be my own proprietary license if I want. I can do with it, what I want. eg: sell it and disallow modifications by everyone else.

-mario

-------------

So if an end user of your resume edition, wants to publish his own version they can do so. They just need to modify the existing License tiddler like so
eg:

The content of this TiddlyWiki is licensed: <what ever the user wants>

The TiddlyWiki Resume Edition is licensed: <link to your license>

TiddlyWiki core is BSD licensed
Additional Plugin Licenses can be found at the [[Control Panel|$:/ControlPanel]]

--> done

-mario

[BJ]

I don't think that tiddlers are covered by any license, only their content can be covered - they are just contains, albeit produced by the software (that is what the tw software does), - it doesn't matter what the name of the tiddler is, only if it contains modified tiddlywiki code  - that makes it is subject to the license. Because the license is bsd it doesn't matter how other software interfaces with tw, you can call the api without being subject to the license.

An area in which I am unclear is when the core is patched by other software. I would guess that the patching software is subject to the license - In which case it may be better to split software up into two modules - the patching code - subject to the license and the rest of application.

[Jed Carty]

Every tiddlywiki html file has the license at the top. That license says it applies to the entire file. Since tiddlywiki is a single file than it means that the license applies to all modifications and content added to the wiki. On github where the files are separate than having separate licenses isn't a problem because that is how software licenses normally work, but once the html file is created than either the license at the top is meaningless or it applies to the whole file including all the tiddlers and the content. This is the part that the licenses aren't designed to handle.

With normal code separate modules can be separate files and you can link to our call functions from one without affecting the license. What tiddlywiki does mixes the code together which, in all the instances I have seen, counts as a modification of the bsd code making the result fall under the bsd license.

This isn't a problem with the idea of licensing, it is a problem with this situation not being addressed by the specific licenses. Up until you create the html file there isn't any problem, but once the html file is created the entire thing, including all tiddler content, has a bsd license because it is the base tiddlywiki code with modifications. For anything in the base tiddlywiki code and most plugins or editions, this is fine. If see were to make an edition for a portfolio website for writers than any of their writing that they add to the site would be part of the html file which gives it the bsd license.

As an example, my site the images are hosted on the server and aren't part of the wiki so they aren't affected by the bad license, but the posts and anything else on the site is part of the wiki, which automatically applies the bsd license because it is a modification of the tiddlywiki code. For the resume builder the edition itself is under the same license as the rest of tiddlywiki, this is what I want. I would like to extend it to be a resume /portfolio site (like LinkedIn, but not useless and evil). The problem is that any content on this site would be under the bsd license and most people I have asked about this have said that they didn't want their resume released under those terms.

I think that the ideas behind the bsd license fit very well with what tiddlywiki is and we may be able to get help making a flavor of the license that fits our case, but the current one doesn't.
The result you are talking about is exactly how we would want this to work but just writing that some portion of the code (because as a quine there is no distinction between code and content) isn't subject to the license doesn't work or licenses in general would be meaningless.

[Jed Carty]

And for the link, it should work again. I really need to remember to now have the same tiddlywiki open in multiple tabs. Luckly Tiddlyspot has automatic backups. http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/#Thoughts%20about%20TiddlyWiki%20and%20Licensing

[BJ]

On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 6:54:14 PM UTC+1, Jed Carty wrote:

Every tiddlywiki html file has the license at the top. That license says it applies to the entire file. Since tiddlywiki is a single file than it means that the license applies to all modifications and content added to the wiki. On github where the files are separate than having separate licenses isn't a problem because that is how software licenses normally work, but once the html file is created than either the license at the top is meaningless or it applies to the whole file including all the tiddlers and the content. This is the part that the licenses aren't designed to handle.

Maybe you can modify the $:/core/templates/tiddlywiki5.html tiddler including your own license: $:/MY/copyright.txt

$:/MY/copyright.txt would say something like

blahblah wiki  is copywrite :ME
 This software contains components from tiddlywiki which are available under this license:

[Copy of the tiddlywiki BSD license goes here]
 

 `

[Jed Carty]

Adding a license isn't the problem, adding content that doesn't use the BSD license is the problem.

[BJ]

I think you can choose any license, :
blahblah wiki  is copywrite :ME and is licensed under (your choice)
 This software contains components from tiddlywiki which are available under this license:

[Copy of the tiddlywiki BSD license goes here]
 

[Jed Carty]

The BSD license explicitly states that modifications of the source code are also subject to the BSD license. Because it is a single file everything in the wiki is part of the code and you can not remove the BSD license from the code or from any part of the code, even if the part you want to remove the license from is your modification.

The relevant part of the license is:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

For TiddlyWiki (at least as an html file) the two conditions are equivalent. The license is useful in the context of open source software because it applies to all modifications of and derivatives made from the code. So anything contained in a tiddlywiki is part of the source code and therefore subject to this license.

In most other coding contexts the code can be separated into different files or libraries which allows you to use BSD licensed code with a larger project that contains components that don't use an open source license. As far as I can tell the situation brought about by using tiddlywiki for creative works is unique and none of the licenses fit this situation because they consider the source code for each library or application as a collection of distinct entities, not a monolithic entity that contains distinct modules that can each be subject to their own license independent of the container.

I don't think that this use is in anyway in opposition to the ideas of free software, but it is a situation that hasn't been addressed yet so none of the existing licenses allow what we want.

[BJ]

One question is whether adding tiddlers 'modifies' the tiddlywiki source or not. If I have checkout out tiddlywiki from git and am building it from tiddlers, I can edit the templates to change the license and so I have modified the source. But as the purpose of a tiddlywiki is to build tiddlers into an html file, any other tiddlers added I would not consider that to be modifying the source, but as a function of the program. But it would be good if Jeremy modified the templates to enable the license to be modified without editing it.

I think even if adding tiddlers is considered modifying the tw code, those modification belong to the author not to tiddlywiki. As the bsd license only stipulates that you must include the license statment, you are free to choose a license for your own work. As long as your tiddlers are all your own work (do not contain any (modified) tiddlywiki code) then it would seem they are completely under your control.

[Eric Shulman]

On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 2:58:06 PM UTC-7, Jed Carty wrote:

...Because it is a single file everything in the wiki is part of the code...

...anything contained in a tiddlywiki is part of the source code and therefore subject to this license...

...none of the licenses fit this situation because they consider the source code for each library or application as a collection of distinct entities, not a monolithic entity that contains distinct modules that can each be subject to their own license independent of the container. 

Despite your well-stated argument, I think you have unnecessarily conflated "file" and "code" to be synonymous (at least, for the purposes of this discussion)

While it is true that most conventional applications use separate files to isolate the code from the content, the *container* used to distribute the code should not be construed the only way to define what is or is not code.  Note how the BSD license language itself addresses "redistribution and use in source and binary forms" without regard to the the method of distribution.

The problem for TiddlyWiki is that it code and content are included in the same distribution package (a single HTML file), and this makes the *conventional* distinction between code and content ambiguous.  However, this doesn't preclude providing other means to clearly identify what parts of the package are code and which are content.

We only need to limit the TiddlyWiki BSD license to the clearly identifiable TWCore components of the distribution package in order to allow the remainder of the file contents to have whatever license is desired.  For example, all TWCore tiddlers could have "license" field that points to a BSD license statement that included with the document as a shadow tiddler.   Any other (non-TWCore) tiddlers could then be subject to whatever terms and conditions that are specifically included within or referenced by those individual tiddlers.

Note that both US Copyright law and the Berne Convention on International Copyright provide that copyrights do not have to be registered (or even declared) to be enforceable and that copyright automatically goes to the creator/author of the materials, unless otherwise explicitly granted, in writing, to another entity.  In other words, to paraphrase a famous quote from ZeroWing.... "ALL YOUR TIDDLERS ARE BELONG TO YOU!"

-e

[Jed Carty]

While I still feel a bit hesitant about this I may be the only one so I will just assume that I am being paranoid and interpreting the license as being stricter than it actually is.

Eric,

I hadn't really considered that the license doesn't define source code or any way to distinguish between separate parts of the code, I had just been going by the individual files count as the same code convention that I have seen elsewhere. Given that tiddlywiki is a possibly unique case at the moment I think it would be a good idea to explicitly state what the distinctions are between the core, each plugin and the content of the wiki. Given what you have said I don't think that this would necessarily have to be part of the license statement.


And to be clear I wasn't trying to just be argumentative about this, I was just worried that if the problem did exist it could be a serious one. To help with my paranoia I will work on writing something explaining the differences between the separate components for the purposes of licenses and try to put together a simple plugin for adding a license that the user decides on into the html file.

[PMario]

On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 7:54:14 PM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

With normal code separate modules can be separate files and you can link to our call functions from one without affecting the license. What tiddlywiki does mixes the code together which, in all the instances I have seen, counts as a modification of the bsd code making the result fall under the bsd license.

no. BSD is not GPL
If you modify it, it's yours.
 
-m

[PMario]

On Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 1:02:33 AM UTC+2, Eric Shulman wrote:

 "ALL YOUR TIDDLERS ARE BELONG TO YOU!"

right.
-m

[Jed Carty]

Mario,

Yeah, sorry about that. My mind somehow went from 'in the html file there isn't anything to tell you what is the base tiddlywiki with the license and what isn't so you can't see what the license applies to' to 'the license applies to everything'. So pretty much all of what I have said is wrong.

[PMario]

On Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 2:38:40 AM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

Yeah, sorry about that.

You don't need to be sorry. You expressed your thoughts. I expressed mine :)
 

My mind somehow went from 'in the html file there isn't anything to tell you what is the base tiddlywiki with the license and what isn't so you can't see what the license applies to' to 'the license applies to everything'. So pretty much all of what I have said is wrong.

You can see it in that way. .. I think proper licensing is important, but it also should be "relatively" easy to use for the author and the end user. So if we think too much and want to cover every little detail and possibility, imo we make it more complicated, that it needs to be.

Github gives everyone a very good way to see the differences between "core" - "edition" - "end user" content.

IMO the most important things are:

 - With TW we can go completely open source. MIT, BSD, CC-BY for plugins, content ...

 - We can use very strict licenses if we need to. eg: CC-BY-NC-SA

 - and as I wrote: You can always ask the author to change the license.

have fun!
mario

[Jeremy Ruston]

Apologies, I've been away for a few days, and not had a chance to respond. Based on this thread, I still think there is an opportunity to improve things. I've made a concrete proposal in a new GitHub ticket:

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1890

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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