[Corpora-List] license question

[Andy Roberts]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Emmanuel PROCHASSON wrote:

> If /Paul et al/ are to give up the project for any reason, there can't be new 
> maintainer and all the work done is lost. Free licenses don't give any 
> obligation to owner/maintainer, but anyone can fork them (which has led to 
> great result such as Blender or inkscape). Such licenses make their object 
> perennial (as my french-english dictionnary says :).

In this scenario we would hope the owner/maintainer would handover the
project under a fully open license. This happens a lot in the software
world.

>> 2. Free/open source projects can "use" non-derivative resources. They
>> can't redistributed under the same license as the project that uses it.
>> This typically means that it is distributed as a separate component.
>> It's a bit like saying an open source concordancer can't process the BNC
>> because it doesn't use an open licence!
> You are right (the same thing can be said for NC : no commercial project 
> could distribute it, but all can use it as a separate component), but 
> cc-by-nc-nd is just like freeware : you can freely (like beer) use it but 
> that's not free (like freedom) at all and I think that's not suitable for 
> scientific work.

Unfortunately many high quality lexical resources are not Free. This is
the reality of Corpus Linguistics research, especially where many large
corpora are created by harvesting 3rd party lexical resources that are
bound under copyright. I think the CL community would struggle if it
upheld a Free stance, as noble as that is.

>
> NC part implies, for example, that the lexicon can't be distributed in a 
> CD-Rom with a proceedings of any conference, as long as the book is sold, 
> since this is /commercial/, although commercial here doesn't necessarily 
> means "making money with the lexicon". That also means that no one can sell 
> the lexicon on CD-Rom, even if the price asked just compensate the cost of 
> the cd-rom and the cost of the mail.
>

This is unfortunate but when you look at the broader picture, you can
understand why the license restricts this. Creative Commons is well
suited to artistic words such as photos, novels, music, articles, radio,
etc, etc. I think it's inappropriate to distribute a collection of CC-nc
photos or music on a CD and charge for it (even if I'm breaking even).

However, let's not forget, if someone wishes to use a CC-licensed
resource beyond its restrictions, they can ask for permission. The idea
that a cc-nc licensed resourced can never appear on a conference
proceedings CD is false, but the cc-nc license gives some controll to
the owner to ensure that it's not being exploited.

> I am not to judge what one want or doesn't want to let done with its work, I 
> just want to warn user of those licenses about issue that most just don't 
> see. Most of them understand "NC" part as "no one can make money with my 
> work" althought it means "my work can't be seen near anything related to 
> money".
>

This is true, and I think this needs to be improved in CC v3.0.

> It seems preferable to me to protect my work from stealing. I agree to give 
> my work away but no one is allowed to take my name from it, and no one is 
> allowed to derivate it in a not free way. Hypothetic commercial version are 
> free too and can be freely distributed with the same term. My work has been 
> improved by someone else and the result can still be used by everyone, how 
> wonderful !
>

Just to be clear, I subscribe to this view too! I'm an open source
adocate. However, I know that many organisations are quite sceptical
about it. For the CL community, I'd be happier to see more free (as in
beer) tools and corpora before making the free (as in speech) issue a 
priority.

Regards,
Andy

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