[tei-council] Fwd: kibitzing

Fri Sep 30 03:25:41 EDT 2011

Council. I would definitely like to follow Gabriel on this and ask the council to vote on the following statement (I know someone will find optimal en words afterwards):

The council recommends adopting a double license combining BSD-2 and CC-BY whereby people who want to re-use text or data-like TEI-content should use CC-BY, and those who want to use the
code and software-like content should use BSD-2.

+1 LR

Le 29 sept. 2011 à 19:55, Martin Holmes a écrit :

> On 11-09-29 10:37 AM, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
>> Did we decide against multi-licensing? (I've lost track of the early
>> parts of this discussion.)
> 
> This is a good idea. It means we don't have to draw the boundaries 
> between things (which I think is practically impossible). Even where you 
> think they might be clear, they're really not -- it's conceivable, for 
> instance, that source code could be used in a textual manner (as an 
> illustration of programming methodology in a teaching text, for 
> example). Letting users choose the licence that suits their ideology as 
> well as their project seems a good all-round compromise.
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
>> If there's no problem with licensing a text under both CC and BSD (say),
>> which would allow a potential re-user to choose under which license she
>> wants to re-use it, couldn't we just license the whole shebang under all
>> three licenses (LGPL, BSD, CC), and say somewhere explicitly in text
>> that people who want to re-use text or data-like things should use one
>> of the appropriate licenses (or just CC), and those who want to use the
>> code and software-like things should use the appropriate licenses (or
>> just BSD, although we've now let LGPL a bit out of the bag, no?).
>> 
>> This means that someone who is using one of our outputs that is
>> somewhere in the grey area, where Lou, for example thinks it is source
>> code (and therefore software) and I think it is source (and therefore
>> data), can decide what sort of re-use they're going to make of it and
>> therefore which license is appropriate to them. (I think I agree with
>> Piotr that most things, even if they are in a shade of grey, can be
>> agreed to be either more like text/data or more like code/software.)
>> 
>> Did we have a compelling argument against multi-licensing like this?
>> 
>> G
>> 
>> On 2011-09-29 18:28, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>> I agree wholeheartedly with the comments on the LGPL here, but I'm not
>>> sure that there IS a licence that's "conceived and formulated to apply
>>> to natural language texts" other than the CC licences, and those are
>>> absolutely unsuitable for code. On the other hand, BSD is in no way (as
>>> far as I can see) unsuitable for texts, and is truly permissive in the
>>> way we wish it to be.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On 11-09-29 07:29 AM, Unsworth, John M wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Sharing an informed opinion contrary to my earlier advice on licensing....
>>>> 
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>> 
>>>>> From: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen"<cmsmcq at blackmesatech.com>
>>>>> Subject: kibitzing
>>>>> Date: September 29, 2011 3:40:16 AM CDT
>>>>> To: John Unsworth<unsworth at uiuc.edu>
>>>>> Cc: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen"<cmsmcq at blackmesatech.com>
>>>>> 
>>>>> John,
>>>>> 
>>>>> please forgive this observation, which is impertinent in the historical sense:
>>>>> the issue is non of my business, and it's not my decision.  So delete this
>>>>> mail and ignore it, if you wish.
>>>>> 
>>>>> but I've been chatting with Piotr Banski, here at this conference, and he
>>>>> tells me the TEI seems to moving toward a decision to make all TEI
>>>>> materials available under the LGPL.  this seems to me ill advised, not
>>>>> because i have any reservations about open source but because the LGPL
>>>>> is not formulated in a way that makes sense for human-readable documents
>>>>> as opposed to executable code.  i have occasionally had occasion to
>>>>> try to understand what the LGPL might mean, when applied to natural
>>>>> language texts, and my conclusion has invariably been that the idea
>>>>> is incoherent.
>>>>> 
>>>>> the practical effect in the particular cases i've been involved with is that
>>>>> i have not used the material after all, because i could not bring myself
>>>>> to use a license did not seem to apply either to the material being
>>>>> licensed or to any use I might make of it.  a license which does not
>>>>> clearly convey permission to use the material in the intended way
>>>>> does not effectively perform the job of a license.  i believe i am not the
>>>>> only reader of English who finds LGPL unclear when applied to natural
>>>>> language documents (in my case, 'incomprehensible' would be
>>>>> nearer the mark).
>>>>> 
>>>>> if you want TEI documentation to be available for reuse, please use
>>>>> a license conceived and formulated to apply to natural language
>>>>> texts.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> ****************************************************************
>>>>> * C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Black Mesa Technologies LLC
>>>>> * http://www.blackmesatech.com
>>>>> * http://cmsmcq.com/mib
>>>>> * http://balisage.net
>>>>> ****************************************************************
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Martin Holmes
> University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
> (mholmes at uvic.ca)
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Laurent Romary
INRIA & HUB-IDSL
laurent.romary at inria.fr