[GOAL] Re: What is the GOAL?

[Heather Morrison]

This is a good point and thank you for your participation Jacinto.

CC-BY-SA is not the same as copyleft. What CC-BY SA requires is that downstream derivatives use the same license, but not that the user shares their work in the same manner. This is different from what I would consider a commonsense understanding of sharealike.

For example, if I share my work freely on the world wide web using a CC-BY-SA license, someone else can take the work and include it in a compilation for them to sell, as long as they use the same license. In other words, they need to use the license, but they do not need to follow my example of free-of-charge.

There are important differences between scholarly works and the code that is central to the free software community. For many in the free software community, what is important is that you can access the underlying code and change it (re-use), while the question of whether the software is free of charge is a different matter.

These are not moot points. Coding software, manipulating research data, and reading articles are three different things.

best,

Heather 

On 2015-04-08, at 9:59 AM, Jacinto Dávila wrote:

> Before we get trapped into the technical details, I think we must welcome the spirit of Jeroen's wisth list and of Heather's challenge. Thank you so much. 
> 
> CC-BY does have that kind of potential problem. The free software community saw that coming and invented copyleft. CC-BY-SA sort that out, I think. 
> 
> On 8 April 2015 at 09:06, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 2:04 PM, David Prosser <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Jeroen - CC-BY license
> >
> > Heather - NO!!! the CC-BY license is a major strategic error of the open access movement. Allowing downstream commercial use to anyone opens up the possibility of re-enclosure.  ...
> 
> I continue to be unable to grasp Heather’s argument.  If, for whatever reason, I purchase from you a CC-BY article I can, as it is CC-BY, make the article freely available.  I don’t see how CC-BY allows for re-enclosure when it contains within itself the ultimate enclosure-busting feature of allowing unlimited distribution provided there is attribution.
> 
> David
> 
>  
> I completely agree with David. If HeatherM can show us that total enclosure has ever actually occurred we need to know. The conditions are almost inconceivable:
> * a commercial company encloses the *published* CC-BY article. It strips off the licence (thereby breaking the contract).
> * the world destroys or loses ALL other copies of the manuscript. It then forgets that this manuscript ever existed as CC-BY.
> 
> Only then does the illegally enclosed object represent monopoly control. 
> 
> In the normal case there are always copies of the un-enclosed article available for free use, re-use, modification and redistribution
> 
> P.
> 
> [Far more serious is the following scenario which happens frequently enough to be really serious. A traditional toll-access publisher accepts payment from an author/funder for CC-BY licensing. It then publishes the manuscript without CC-BY and under a more (often completely) restrictive licence. Only the author/funder knows that the m/s should be CC-BY. Unless they publish this information (as Wellcome Trust and some libraries did last year) the m/s will remain closed and will continue to be resold. And early copies , before the discovery, will probably still circulate with "All rights reserved". ]
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Jacinto Dávila
> http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/ingenieria/jacinto
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