[PP-main] Roadmap and notes.

[lists at itsg.net.au]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> I'll give you some definitions. We define certain sites to be members of PPN.
> What exactly is required of a site to be defined as a member of PPN isn't
> defined, but the general consensus is that a meber site is one that also
> gives something back. How much, and under what terms, remains to be discussed.

okay, i'm with you so far 8^)

> The rights to publish PPN distributed material varies between the member
> sites and the non-member sites. The member sites can publish all PPN material
> under the standard terms (probably, those terms are something along the lines
> of "retain the copyright notice and include a reference to the author and to
> PP). Anyway, the author is given a choice on the license indication whe wants
> to put on the content for use by non-member sites. The idea is to have three
> options, "free", "negotiate", and "not allowed". If it's "free", then
> non-member sites can use it unedr the same terms as member sites. If it's
> "negotiate", then the author needs to be contacted and an agreement has to be
> reached (usually, this would involve payment), and if it's "not allowed", no
> non-member sites are allowed to republish at all.

oh, ok. i get it now. so there are actually two different kinds of
members. for arguments sake, "full" and "partial". all content is
available to "full" members, pending inclusion of the appropriate
copyright notices - and the three options only apply to the "partial"
members. correct me if i'm wrong.

> This should cover most situations. The only thing that would remain, is to
> define exactly what makes a member site. And it gets a bit muddled here, do
> we demand that they give back content? How much? Under what terms? Etc. This
> is a good discussion for the licensing workgroup, though.

i think this (the topic we are currently discussing) will be the most
debated topic on that list, even more so than the actual license the
content will be under.

the reason i say that is if you are going to start putting restrictions on
the content in any form, it may have legal implications for ppn.
i understand why both you and raph think this is a good idea, and with a
lot of effort it could work. however, i personally don't believe ppn will
be as successful as it would be if the content where free (beer and
speech), period.

by saying that, i am not implying that authors of the content should not
get payed. on the contrary, i feel the authors should be rewarded fairly
for their work (unless they don't want it) - up front, by the first site
that carries it. (and other sites are free to make donations to them too).
 
i think that tying together the distribution process (ppn) with the idea
of being paid is a bad thing. imho, ppn should focus solely on
*distributing* free quality content to anyone who wants it, not spending
its time being entangled in arguements over some weblog's use of an
authors work without permission or paying.

put another way, think of free/open source software. would it be as
successful as it is if you were *obliged* to give back to the community if
you wanted it for free?

(i hope that all made sense).

> This will be the first part of the work the XML WG should do, so I hope
> you'll be there.

i'm looking forward to it. i think nick lothian has been doing a lot of
work in this area.

- avi