Quoting Michael Mandiberg <[log in to unmask]>:
> I have also many times attempted to do the
> perfect-collaboration-where-everyone-has-the-same-responsibility-and-does-the-same-work-and-gets-the-same-credit. _it_doesn't_work_. someone always flakes out. someone one's skills are always more labor intensive, or more needed in each project. someone is always too bossy or controlling. nothing is perfect. utopia is the land that does not exist. that is just the way
> it
> goes.
Projects are also in danger of being captured and burnt out by people
who want to make them a perfect experiment in radical democracy (or
whatever) and will spend all of the group's time and effort perfecting
the form of the project rather than actually doing anything.
> 1. We are using only public domain and creative commons licensed images
> in our examples. We did a fair amount of research, and realized that
> our image budget would be larger than the entire budget for our book
> (http://www.blog.digital-foundations.net/?p=4). So we turned to the
> public domain and creative commons for our examples:
> http://flickr.com/photos/digitalfoundations
Wrapping PD images in an NC work is commons enclosure.
> 2. We have secured the first Creative Commons license from
> Peachpit/Pearson. (CC+, BY-NC-SA) We don't actually have the contract
> signed yet (LOL) but we do have the go-ahead. This is huge. Not just
> as a symbolic marker of the acceptance of 'openness' in the proprietary
> media world, but b/c of what it allows us to do. Remember: Better and
> Faster
NC-SA is not "Open". It does not fit any of the definitions of Open
Source, Free Software or Free Culture. It is a sharecropping or free
advertising licence.
This is one of the problems with the word "Open". It is warm and fuzzy
and covers a multitude of sins.
> 3. What we can do with CC // Better and Faster:
This is Raymond's claim for Open Source, its selling point for
corporate culture. The point of "Free Software", and of Free Culture,
is that you are free to use the work. "Openness" is a product of this
freedom. Ignoring freedom always causes problems.
> Though the book is only
> half written(!) we are already planning with Adam Hyde of FLOSS Manuals
> (http://en.flossmanuals.net/) to translate the book into Open Source.
> "Translate into Open Source?" you ask...? Yes, translate the core
> exercises from Photoshop to GIMP, from Illustrator to InkScape, etc.
> And then, we'll translate those translations into the growing set of
> languages that FLOSS Manuals are working in.
If you remove the NC restriction then people will be able to do this
and recoup the costs they incur in doing so without having to
negotiate either payment or a proprietary licence from you. This will
make things easier for both of you and will still drive up the value
of your work through reputational network effects.
NC is removing "openness" here.
> Imagine: Josef Alber's
> color exercises as a means of explaining how to use the color picker in
> InkScape... in Farsi. This is openness because it is Better and Faster.
The text and images of Alber's exercises may be under copyright. And
Albers is long dead and unable to give permission for translations.
His estate may deny permission. If his work was copyleft and this
copyleft wasn't broken by an NC restriction then this wouldn't be a
problem.
> So, to recap, for me it is about Better and Faster. Openness is a
> faster route to better work. There are lots of ways of doing it, but I
> do think that as much as they pretend pure openness, successful OS
> projects all have hierarchy.
I don't see the contradiction between openness and hierarchy.
If you are OK with the hierarchy you submit to it voluntarily. If you
are not OK with the hierarchy you fork the project. But if the project
is NC and you're not the copyright holder then it becomes a white
elephant.
The openness of the project is simply the freedom of the individual to
use the work.
- Rob.
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