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Urs, one of my concerns is that I do not allow to anybody to restrict the usage by third parties of my contribution to general Lab to the usage which cites it. Period. Any restriction of the usage of my contribution I consider illegal and against my will as a contributor. I am afraid that you do restrict the usage by the present statement, though more softly. Moreover it your statement that the acknowledging is required is restricting the right not to acknowledge to the very authors of the passage. So I can make a paragraph on the basis of my personal notes which existed before, and when reusing my own material I will have to cite the Lab that the material appeared there !! this is crazy
It is far more serious concern that somebody copyrights the hijacked material and restricts its use. Hence it is more important to protect from restrictions of usage than to restrict its usage, and the latter caused me to spend several days on past discussions on the topic and at the end this main concern is exempted from the statement. So the most important statement which should be on Lab page is not to restrict the usage but to forbid to restrict to anything beyond academic standards. Only the further restriction can jeopardize the material in main lab. Something like
Anybody copying parts of the material from Lab can not cause further restrictions to its usage than those which are implied by general standards of academic fairness and academic standard of authorship.
From my point of view this sentence is in fact enough to protect any rights I can imagine are needed (personal labs can have their additional statements), It is precise enough and has no statements which I am fighting against for last 1 year without success.
The above is continuation and response to the thread on Spam, by request of Andrew that the discussion continues elsewhere.
Just remove that statement on the HomePage. I had been trying to reflect the state of the discussion here, which was mainly driven by you and Andrew, as far as I remember. I thought it would be good to try to wrap things up. If it didn’t work, just remove the statement.
I still don’t actually understand why we necessarily need to make any statement at all. But you and Andrew seem to have ideas about this. So maybe you two should sort it out first.
In fact I think that the following says it all, both sides of usage:
The text in Lab is an author work which authors dispose in public domain for unlimited free usage subject to the usual standards of citation in academic community.
The text in Lab which is based on other works will also keep the standards of citation of its sources and respect the limitations on usage the authors of the sources may require.
Anybody copying parts of the material from Lab can not cause further restrictions to its usage than those which are implied by general standards of academic fairness and academic standard of authorship.
I see A fundamental difference between “following academic standard of citation” and literally requiring citation from anybody and for any usage (including the authors, including little pieces, including text which just has minor changes to the predating sources etc,). The latter nonsense being required by the present and many previous variants of the statement. I also think the imposition of any further restrictions should be explicitly forbidden, otherwise somebody can copy our material, copyright it and back ask Lab to remove it. This is MORE important than the exaggerated wows for citation and makes Lab a more positive factor in making new standards of open material, than the “Terms of use” and “must acknowledge” philosophy.
(I want to be inspired to write in Lab and making it a police state does not make it so. Thus we need to be more open than the average journal and an average journal does not ask explicitly when and how to cite, but assumes general academic standards only.)
why we necessarily need to make any statement at all
Thank you Urs. There are two reasons in my opinion,
One is that we need to prevent that somebody copies the Lab and THEN makes it forbidden for further use by making a posteriori protection/restriction of usage of the Lab material. This possibility important to forbid. (It could be strictly forbidden as far as I am concerned.)
We need to encourage people for
USAGE: that as long as it is fair academic usage with fair practices they should go and disseminate.
CONTRIBUTION: that they do not loose their right to publish their own material if they also contribute it to Lab
I see problems if we go into detailing beyond vague and understandable phrases like “fair academic usage”, “academic standards of citation”, etc. for example the strict need of citation of every single usage by anybody, which I find unacceptable for the stated reasons.
Okay, here’s my first draft. Before anyone goes ballistic, it is a draft.
The team that started the nLab project did so out of a desire for somewhere to work on mathematics in an open environment. The nLab is, therefore, intended to aid mathematicians and not hinder them. The short version of the “terms of use” is thus:
Your use of the nLab shall hinder neither you nor others in their mathematical work.
It is important to note that this refers to the text of any contribution. Mathematical ideas are not covered by copyright.
In slightly more detail, there are two main ways in which one can interact with the nLab: either as a reader or a contributor.
You may use the material presented on the nLab in any manner provided that such use does not hinder others doing the same.
Note that this does not mean that you can use the material in a way that breaks the law. You cannot, for example, claim as your own work that appears on the nLab.
You retain copyright of your contributions. You grant the nLab a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to use and distribute your contributions.
You are therefore free to republish your work as you so desire, but that any further publications cannot affect the status of the material on the nLab.
I suggest linking word “hinder” (in future Lab text) to some succinct online dictionary page. I myself have only a vague feeling what this word means. One may mention “academic standards of citation” somewhere, but I like that the text stays short. One can have a longer separate page with more variants.
You retain copyright of your contributions. You grant the nLab a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to use and distribute your contributions.
I do not understand what this means. If somebody retains a copyright, does that mean that this person can forbid other people to copy the material from Lab while acknowledging ? Owning copyright has that power, it is not just the right to republish but also to restrict others. What do you think ?
I’m open to suggestions on wording. Here’s where being a native speaker can hinder matters: I don’t have a good feel for what words “work” and which are confusing to non-native speakers. So please do suggest alternatives.
I felt that the “academic standards of citation” stuff was orthogonal to this. We could have a page on “How to cite the nLab” where we could put things like this. The key difference, I think, is that the “academic standards of citation” stuff is how we would like people to behave, but we do not require it of them.
The point about the copyright/licence stuff is this: we want to be able to do whatever we want with contributions, but we don’t want to stop you doing whatever you want with stuff that you contributed. Now, the copyright holder can do whatever they want with their stuff, so if one of the contributor or the nLab holds the copyright then they’re okay. Transferring copyright is a minefield (as it may also transfer liability) so the simplest situation is if the original author retains the copyright. However, as you say, they could then block us. So to prevent that, we ask for a licence to use the material that, effectively, gives us the same rights as the copyright holder as far as reusing the material is concerned. That way both the nLab and the author can use the material as they like, and neither can stop the other doing so.
In short: yes, holding the copyright gives them that power, but granting the licence takes it away again.
The key difference, I think, is that the “academic standards of citation” stuff is how we would like people to behave, but we do not require it of them.
I agree, though I think that academic standards are quite stretchable, I mean the citation is going mainly when the usage grows to somewhat substantial level and the format and details of citation depend on the situation and they do not go infinitely many levels of recursion backwards (unlike in software where the licences get copied recursively).
I agree with all esle you said (including that we should not take the copyright from the authors) though did not quite get the last point:
So to prevent that, we ask for a licence to use the material that, effectively, gives us the same rights as the copyright holder as far as reusing the material is concerned.
How about the guys who copy it from Lab ? Is our “license” protecting them as well in some sense ? In which sense ?
I’m all with Zoran in this discussion.
I'm late to the discussion, but I'm wondering whether the possibility of using a Creative Commons licence has already been debated? I apologise if I'm reviving an old argument, but Zoran's concerns seem to be adequately addressed by Attribute-ShareAlike licence. This is the same licence used by Wikipedia and MO, amongst many others.
Licenses are also beyond common sense of understood gift of a random visitor who happens to contribute. For example, suppose I am for the first time at Lab, coming from a university in Kenya, knowing what is a usual academic standard and wanting to help. I will probably not know and will not want to know what kind of newest hot topic in the ugly world of licences, businesses, lawsuits etc. does. Can the Lab afford such a good willling person ? Yes, by not requiring any licenceing, guranteeing that the rights are kept and warning only that everybody can also use the gift in positive way, including not requireing copying the licenses (the license world has as a main feature a recursive proliferation of licenses from all metarial used). I myself, who spent months on Lab work would immediately stop contrubuting if a formal licence should be signed and if I would have to be informed and to argue about the values of such licenses. Let us make a better example with Lab than the “free software” commuity which is for years arguing and never settling on what should be their final license and which all the time creates new abbreviations.
For example I absolutely reject the condition of Attribute whatever license
If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
I want unlimited distribution limited only by other freedoms. For example that freedom does not mean that you can lie that the work is yours when it isn’t. It also means that you can not have slaves in chains and ask them to recitate the copy of this work as slavery is illegal. You can also not shoot the author becuase you do not like that he was the author and not you. And many others don’t. Unlimited means simply unlimited as long as normal morality and normal law allows. In this area academic rules apply. We do math by doing math and there is a tradition in doing this, in diseminating knowledge, respecting scholars and so on. This world does not need to be intruded with Bill Gates-world of lawyer-equipped bandits coming with tons of paper work, licenses, appendixes, signatures and so on. Rule of thumb is if it did not exist in scholarship of ancient Athena, it does not need to exist now. Unless somebody means he is smarter than Socrates.
If somebody alters his author’s way and does not want his alternated copy to be copied, yes he can forbid that, as long as he does not host it in Lab. I know that in software community some find it useful to proclaim any piece which contains free piece to be also free, but honestly this is just a trickery. Also I would not accept the license having word “commercial” like the Attribute whatever licence. If something is free, why making a modifier of no internal meaning to the authorship. Free commercial use has no sense if every usage otherwise respected should be equally allowed. If the modifier makes sense than it is a constrint. And we do not want constraints. Why would the license imply the social system in external world ? It should just refer to normal standards which academic society has, not specifying and hence not limiting what that means. This means that it is left to the common sense of academic people to be in control of what it means. If the world is going to become a hell and standards change, and people have no memory or respect to past standards, well too bad, it happened before. If it is getting to be improved to a heaven, well, really good.
FWIW, I think I like Andrew’s draft 6.
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