It turns out that the white paper does not describe very clearly what was intended by the use of CC-BY-SA for archetypes. After discussion with Sam, I have created a new wiki page describing in detail the intended proposal. I think wider understanding and more informed debate of the proposal will now be possible.
Hi Everyone
The Board discussed the licensing arrangements regarding the archetypes held on openEHR.org. The principles are:
· The Foundation wishes to ensure that all archetypes contributed to the openEHR Foundation are available without restriction to others to use to improve health care and eHealth
· That the semantic expression of the content is what is deemed to be ‘collectively owned’ by clinicians and other domain experts.
We have seen some heated debate and concerns by others and it would appear that we are at a sort of stalemate. The alternatives that seem sensible are:
To continue with the current approach: to require transfer of copyright to the openEHR Foundation by any agency contributing the archetype or template
To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC-BY license (with a permissions clause saying what attribution applies to)
To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC-BY-SA license (with a permissions clause saying what share alike applies to)
To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC0 (public domain) license
a. See: http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0
The consensus of the Board at the last meeting was that our intention in transferring copyright was to ensure that the use of archetypes could not be restricted by third parties. The other CC licenses do make demands on the users and will require permission clauses. Erik and Thomas are concerned about the effect of SA on commercial uptake, BY has its own problems for derived works with describing what attribution is required. So, we are asking the list, what do you think about having no copyright for archetypes contributed to the CKM? Would this make them more attractive for users? Would people who contribute them be less likely to do so?
Cheers, Sam
Hi Sam and Everyone,
I think we had enough discussion about licensing for the artefacts,
archetypes and
templates and we cannot get conclusion without calling for votes.
JIRA vote plugins seems available for this vote.
https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/wiki/display/VOTE/JIRA+Voters+and+Watcher+Plugin
https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/wiki/display/JOUT/Poll+Plugin
Best regards,
Shinji
Hi!
Shinji might be correct in that “we had enough discussion about licensing” (even though I think some of the questions asked for years have been avoided rather than answered), but IF it is “time to vote” then the alternatives 1-4 and the place (clinical list) for the vote are highly questionable. I also question the wisdom of letting Sam alone decide this potential voting procedure. It is also questionable what value a vote by anybody else than the board would mean, there is no formal community process in place in openEHR yet, the board is the only formal power.
Some issue details:
a) I don’t think it is fair move the place to discuss the issue several times.
By moving the place of discussion away from the places were arguments and counter arguments are already visible does not lead to a less “heated” discussion, rather it leads to repetitions in order to ensure that the arguments and unanswered questions are visible where the action is. Is the move because you fear the visibility of counter arguments and unanswered questions or is there some other understandable reason?
b) Why formulate the questions the way you have in 1-4 below and why direct it only to the clinical list when it is primarily technical people that know what happens when share-alike/GPL artifacts gets into software stacks.
The real issue to determine is the kind of license family we want to use and why
Before even considering CC-BY-SA above we would need to find out if the proposed non-standard “wavier” is efficient or possible at all since it is a major and untested modification of CC-BY-SA (as described on the wikipage that this discussion has escaped from). With the current suggested CC-BY-SA wavier/modification including re-licensing options it is actually not clear which of the families it belongs to. That discussion is likely not finished yet.
After picking license family we would need to:
c) why call it a “stalemate” when there are still several unanswered concrete practical questions.
d) The alternatives presented by Sam:
2011/9/20 Sam Heard <sam.heard@oceaninformatics.com>:
- To continue with the current approach: to require transfer of
copyright to the openEHR Foundation by any agency contributing the archetype
or template
This question is mainly valid if using CC-BY-SA and can not be determined without considering 2-3.
To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC-BY license
(with a permissions clause saying what attribution applies to)To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC-BY-SA
license (with a permissions clause saying what share alike applies to)
The attribution issue is equal for 2 and 3 but only stated for 2 above.
On the second wikipage there are still unanswered questions regarding the “permissions clause saying what share alike applies to”. How could we possibly select 3 without first understanding the consequences of the suggested practically untested wavier/permission clause?
- To request that the archetype is contributed under the CC0 (public
domain) license
CC-0 would definitely be a possible option, but I believe it would be wise to determine permissive/pd versus copyleft/SA principle before picking between licenses
Otherwise you may get 10 votes for CC-BY, 10 votes for CC-0 and 11 votes for CC-BY-SA, and if you are really twisted you could claim that SA won and ignore the fact that CC-BY and CC-0 may be of almost equal value to most people voting for any of them.
So my suggestion is to
If also the new board goes copyleft/SA, which they of course are fully entitled to do, then people and organisations wanting to avoid the copyleft viral risks can start planning properly for alternative archetype collections with well tested permissive licenses and wouldn’t need to bother bringing up the licence issue (and a possible re-merge of efforts) again until the new more community-base openEHR organization (that might vote differently) is in place. Personally I don’t think such a split would be desirable but understandable.
Best regards,
Erik Sundvall
erik.sundvall@liu.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: +46-13-286733
just to clarify: the point of doing this was to have a known place where the actual Transition proposal was posted and described in detail, as opposed to various informal ‘proposals’ / discussions so far. Remember, what we are discussing is what is in the Transition white paper, and if the discussion changes the white paper, then that needs to be recorded as well. It does mean some repetition unfortunately, but we need to encapsulate the discussion about the Transition document properly.
Hi Shinji / Erik,
I appreciate the licensing discussions seem to have been going on
forever for some people but for many of us, including some member od
the interim Board like myself, this is a new subject and needs
re-visited and teased out. Erik has done a sterling job in pulling
together the various discussions and arguments on the wiki and
although any detailed discussion should take place there, I think it
is fair enough for the list to be used to highlight 'current
thinking'.
I don't think Sam was putting forward an exclusive list of
suggestions, merely setting out a reasonable summary of the options
being looked at afresh. Although I appreciate that most of the
licensing expertise will be on the Technical lists, these discussions
are really confined to the licensing model for the clinical artefacts
and as such I think this list is appropriate. In any case, most active
openEHR members will be signed up to both.
I am particularly interested in the CC-0 Public Domain option, as it
avoids the encumbrance of attribution, as well as the difficulties of
BY-SA that Erik and others have highlighted. Are there any good other
arguments against CC-0? - reply on wiki, please
at
http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/Archetype+licensing+-+the+case+for+CC-BY-SA?focusedCommentId=25985025#comment-25985025
As Erik has suggested it would be difficult to see how we could set up
a formal vote under current arrangements but after a bit more
discussion, an informal poll might be interesting and informative to
the interim Board, though not binding.
I feel things are definitely moving in the right direction and I can
assure everyone that this subject is really being looked at with fresh
eyes by myself and others on the interim Board. Bear with us a little
longer while we get to grips with all of the options!!
Regards,
Ian
Dr Ian McNicoll
office +44 (0)1536 414 994
fax +44 (0)1536 516317
mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859
skype ianmcnicoll
ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com
Clinical Modelling Consultant, Ocean Informatics, UK
openEHR Clinical Knowledge Editor www.openehr.org/knowledge
Honorary Senior Research Associate, CHIME, UCL
BCS Primary Health Care www.phcsg.org