Tag: licensing

Enjoy things while they last (or hope for the best, prepare for the worst)

Posted on July 19, 2022July 20, 2022 by Doug Belshaw

Note: it’s hot, this post might be be more ramble-y than usual…

Next to my bed I have one of these:

Glass paperweight with image of waves within it

It’s a glass paperweight that serves as a memento mori, a reminder that one day I will die. That might seem a bit morbid, but it reminds me to carpe diem (“seize the day”, to use another Latin phrase) and that things won’t be this way forever.

My kids will grow up and leave home.

My current state of calm will dissipate.

My possessions will stop working, get lost, or be stolen.

The list is long, for good and bad.

But my reason for writing this post is not a personal one, but a professional one. Right now, I’m more interested in talking about projects and initiatives ‘dying’ than me kicking the bucket. There have been multiple reasons over the past week where I’ve noticed that people expect things that start off great to continue to be so.

An OER repository was sold off to a company whose website is blacklisted by many educational institutions. A popular Android launcher was sold to an analytics company that’s often blacklisted by network blocking software. A project I’ve been involved with looks like it could be in danger of betraying its radical roots.

This is all very predictable, and is the reason for the popular phrase “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”. Especially in the kind of work I do at the intersection of learning, technology, and community, there are some amazing people collaborating on some fantastic things. It just takes a few bad actors (or people with ‘misaligned incentives’ shall we say) to spoil things.

That’s why setting up projects the right way from the beginning is so important. With MoodleNet, for example, we used the AGPL license, which meant that after I and the team resigned due to some internal drama, the Open Source code could form the basis of the project which has turned into Bonfire.

Even without specific licensing, just working openly can have the same effect. For example, there’s an archive of the work I did with a community that I helped grow at Mozilla around the Web Literacy Map. There’s no reference to it any more on the Mozilla site, but I can still reference it myself.

I’m not bitter about these things. (Well, not any more.) My point is rather than you should set up projects and initiatives in open ways, providing ways for awesome, talented people to get involved. But don’t be naive while doing so. Use defensive licenses, like the AGPL, and the wonderful Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike (CC BY-SA) license which forces derivative works to be shared under the same license.

The same is true of legal structure and governance. WAO is set up as a co-operative with a flat structure and Sociocratic decision-making. It’s not possible for one person to sell out our company from underneath us because of the legal structure we created, after taking advice from more senior members of the co-operative community. And we’ve learned that consent-based decision making allows us to make decisions in line with our values.

Processes (especially around decision-making) work… until they don’t. You have to be intentional about these things. Remember that contracts are for when things go wrong, so cover your back. Imagine the worst thing that could happen, and put in place safeguards. Come up with ways to make decisions in productive ways with other people. Share your work far and wide, but protect it using an appropriate license.

Remember that our time on this planet is short, so let’s be awesome to each other.

In case you’re wondering, I bought my memento mori from The School of Life, and while you can’t get this particular one any more, there are others which are great — if not quite as awesome.

On CC0

Posted on October 15, 2016October 15, 2016 by Doug Belshaw

There’s a lot to unpack in this post by Alan Levine about his attempts to license (or un-license) his photographs with Creative Commons Zero (CC0). The way I think about these things is:

Standard copyright: “All Rights Reserved” — I do the innovation, you do the consumption.
Creative Commons licenses: “Some Rights Reserved” — I have created this thing, and you can use it under the following conditions.
CC0/Public Domain: “No Rights Reserved” — I have created this thing, and you can do whatever you like with it.

I’m not precious about my work. I donated my doctoral thesis to the public domain under a CC0 license (lobbying Durham University to ensure it was stored under the same conditions in their repository). My blog has, for the last five years at least, been CC0 — although I’d forgotten to add that fact to my latest blog theme until writing this post.

For me, the CC0 decision is a no-brainer. I’m working to make the world a better place through whatever talents and skills that I’ve got. While I want my family to live comfortably, I’m not trying to accumulate wealth. That’s not what drives me. So I definitely feel what Alan says that he’s “given up trying to be an attribution cop”.

I care about the commons, but want to shift the Overton window all the way over to a free sharing economy, rather stay fixated on copyright. To me, things like Creative Commons licenses are necessary to water down and mollify the existing extremely-litigious copyright industry. If I’ve got complete control over my work (as I do) then I’ll dedicate it to the public domain.

An aside: if you’re theory of change involves obligation, then you’re better off using the CC BY-SA license. Why? It means whoever uses your work not only has to cite you as the original author, but they must release their own work into the commons.

The thing is that despite this all being couched in legal language (which I’m very grateful to Creative Commons for doing) I’m never, in reality, going to have the time or inclination to be able to chase down anyone who doesn’t subsequently release a derivative work under an open license.

In my experience, reducing the barriers to people using your work means that it gets spread far and wide. Not only that, but the further it’s spread, the greater your real-world insurance policy that people won’t claim your work as their own. After all, the more people who have seen your work, the greater likelihood someone will cry ‘foul’ when someone tries to pass it off as their own.

So I’ll continue with my policy of licensing my work under the CC0 license. Not only does it mark out my work as belonging to a community that believes in the commons, but it’s a great conversation starter for people who might be commons-curious…

Image via CC0.press (just because you don’t have to attribute doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t!)

Why I’ve re-designated Synechism as CC0

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Doug Belshaw

In December 2009 I designated this blog ‘Uncopyrighted’. Since then, a new Creative Commons license has been decided upon:

CC0 1.0 Universal

Public Domain Dedication

The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

So basically, as you were, but hopefully with a bit more clarity. I reserve the right to change this for individual posts, hence the wording:

This blog is available under a CC0 1.0 Universal license, except where stated on individual posts and pages.

It’s extremely tempting to restrict people’s usage of things – who doesn’t like power? But in practice, not only is it extremely difficult (and time-consuming) to do so, it’s actually fundamentally at odds with what I’m trying to achieve (change!) through my writing. 🙂