[PP-main] Roadmap and notes.

[Joakim Ziegler]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2000 at 02:16:14PM +1000, lists at itsg.net.au wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

>> 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 is correct. With the possible exception that there are really jut
members and non-members, that is, no particular registration or anything is
required for a non-member site to publish content that the author has
labelled as "free".


>> 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.

I really don't see this as tying the two together at all. PP doesn't really
want to get involved in the payment and compensation process at all, at least
not at this point. We might, of course, and I think this is natural, get
involved in pointing out illegitimate use of our content, twe're probably in
a position to do so with a little more gravity than if a lone author should
do so.

The main point, however, is to let the author have a choice in what they
allow and disallow. MAking these three options the possible ones is probably
a smart move, it makes it easy to relate to for the content owners.

Authors should indeed be rewarded fairly, and I think that in the case that
the initial publication happens in an existing weblog or similar, that's the
natural place for the payment to come from. However, I'd really like to see
PP become a good venue for first-time publishing as well, that is, an author
who doesn't really know where to submit his/her stuff could just publish
straight to the feed, and people who liked it could republish, under the
terms of the  license. In that case, it'd be very important for the authors
to be able to exert this sort of control for them to want to publish through
us at all.


> 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?

As mentioned earlier, I think the main discussion would be to figure out what
exactly it means to be a "member" site. That's an area I would like to see
good ideas in.

However, your analogy isn't really correct. The sites that reuse PP content
are not like the end users of free software. In fact, they're much more like
people who incorporate free software as parts of their own product. In that
case, you'll find that all the most successful free software licenses indeed
do impose restrictions on how you can do that.


-- 
Joakim Ziegler - simplemente r&d director - joakim at simplemente.net
 FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
      http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.simplemente.net/