Is Public Domain the right license for Open Standards
January 9, 2008
Weird Karma - I just watched a video blog
Chris Messina just pointed me to Episode 2 of the Open Media Video blogs with Tantek Çelik.
First, I think interviews - although talking heads - are valid A/V content as they are discussions/conversations and as such benefit from the medium. A transcript would be nice, but they are time consuming. Though a podcast may be preferable to video if no visuals are needed.
Any way...
I like Tantek's thinking on open formats. I posted about the need for open formats for rich media a while ago. However, I am not sure I hold his view on the public domain being good for open standards.
Now I am not a copyright lawyer, but putting something into the public domain must be done with a great deal of thought, as the ramifications are quite profound. As I understand it (and am happy to be corrected), when a work is in the Public Domain - I or anyone can actually take the work and make a derivative work from it. That derivative work will have all rights reserved unless otherwise stipulated. I am not even obligated to credit the original source.
Now in the open standard world there are many competing interests and MANY perfectly acceptable ways of doing anything. However, for a standard to become "standard use" it must align the majority of the competing interests into adoption. By putting everything into the public domain there is very little motivation to work with others. Working together with others is hard work. We all have different views. Public Domain removes the burden of working with others when I am free to take what everyone has contributed to and make it suit my interests. My interests are the reason I participated in the project/idea/work to begin with isn't it? Remember, interoperability is not the only reason we may participate in an open source project.
It's important to note that I might be really smart and in the end my interests are your interests and my way will be adopted. Even then, it would be better if I had to work within a GPL or CC framework so that my work actually remains in the public interest if not the public domain.
Tantek Çelik is a crazy smart guy. He obviously has thought this through, but I am having trouble seeing it.
benefits from opportunities vs. risks from fears
David,
Thanks much for your blog post and your kind words.
Regarding the questions your ask, I agree these are the kinds of things we should be talking about.
I definitely put a lot of thought and consideration into the pursuit of public domain for open *standards*, which is perhaps the key first distinction I should point out. Open *standards* vs. open *source*. Though similar in ideals, initials, and use of the word "open", they are different enough to merit different treatment. And while I believe strongly that public domain (pd) is best for open standards, I have not spent sufficient time considering pd for open source to say the same. It may be true, but it deserves more consideration.
Regarding the concerns you point out about public domain, you may want to take a look at my follow-up post providing some of the reasoning:
Open as possible means public domain plus a strong community.
In short, first, the strength of a community around any open standard matters so much more than any form of strength of legality/ownership (which may be a false sense of strength, pragmatically speaking, for most efforts), that it is better to enable maximum freedom and openness, and make it clear to the community that its strength is necessary. And second, maximizing the openness of a standard provides the maximum opportunity for the rapid production and distribution of material and support for that standard, both for free (without worrying about the incompatibilities among various "open" licenses), and for profit. I believe these known benefits from the opportunities that public domain brings, greatly outweigh the potential risks from the fears noted.
I'm getting more clarity
Thanks for providing the comment, Tantek and the link to your follow up post. It seems to me that you have tested your position with some game theory.
Your right we need to distinguish between
Open Standard Formats
and
Open Source Software
and
Open (Free) Content (ie Wikipedia)
This has some serious ramifications on what we are doing at Project Opus for JAMM. We definitely need and want to be involved in this discussion.