On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Mia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> True, but is releasing data under an non-commercial licence better
> than not releasing it at all? I guess, from the point-of-view of a
> potential content provider, that might be the crux of the matter?
It probably is better to release under non-commercial than not at all, I'd
agree. It's also a lot better to have data published online, even under "all
rights reserved", than not at all - and let's face it, for many
organisations, simply publishing the data is enough of a barrier.
> Looking back to the Science Museum/NMSI data release, I know that that
> could never have happened if we'd needed to check through all the
> legal and organisational issues around a commercial licence.
Interested to know what these legal/organisational issues might be. I think
some of it comes down to intuitive perceptions of the licence names -
non-commercial sounds like it'd be better at maximising any commercial
value, but share-alike may be just as (or more) effective at this.
> > Lots of people advise that ShareAlike licences are far better than >
> NonCommercial licenses
>
> Interesting, do you have a reference for this?
This is the main article I remember:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655 (though it's a bit old).
There seems to be a more annotated and up-to-date version here:
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC
The 'incompatibility' argument seems to be an important one: NC licences
stop people remixing your content with other share-alike licences, even if
still for non-commercial purposes.
As a counterpoint, here's an introduction to a report by Creative Commons on
the perceptions of their NC clause:
https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127 (which doesn't seem to find a
massive problem, although does acknowledge some confusion).
Personally, I'm not particularly ideological about the issue, and most of my
hacking around with cultural data is fairly unambiguously non-commercial,
but it's an interesting issue - and I think it's probably right that none of
those 1 to 4-star ratings allow for non-commercial only usage.
F
--
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com
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