[iks-community] IKS Community Agreement for good governance

Tue Nov 10 17:02:05 CET 2009

Hi John,

thanks for this very helpful proposal. Some comments and questions  
inline.

> Overview
>
> The IKS Community is formed by those companies and individuals who  
> express their interest in contributing to the IKS project and who  
> subsequently do contribute to the project in one of the ways defined  
> in the IKS Community Agreement. The IKS Community acts as  
> stakeholder and communal contributor to the development of IKS  
> specifications, methodology and any implementations of the  
> Interactive Knowledge Stack. The contributions of members of the IKS  
> Community are regulated by the IKS Community Agreement.
>
> The Community Agreement consists of the following parts:
> • Contribution Assignment: The agreement used by contributors to  
> share copyright on their contributions with Salzburg Research.The  
> agreement also covers some key patent issues.

Copyrights or patents? I suggest that we keep both issues separated.  
Sharing of "patent issues" should be easy for all research partners,  
i.e., research partners should not be limited by patents during the  
project and thereafter. This might be different for sharing patents  
between commercial partners. Copyright is different and probably less  
complicated.

Furthermore I suggest that we make public to all IKS partners who is  
sharing which patents with whom. This helps to avoid misunderstandings  
and problematic patent relationships, e.g., mixing GNU licenses with  
patented software. Then we will also know which software must be  
replaced for IKS solutions under OSS/Free license agreements.

We also need a procedure for setting up such patent sharing agreements  
incl. documentation, signing and arbitration services.

> The agreement is supported with an FAQ for contributors, a process  
> for receiving and archiving signed agreements, and resources to  
> support legal review.
> • Licensing Recommendations for Content: Recommendations for why the  
> IKS project should use the Creative Commons Attribution licence for  
> most of the content that the project produces.

"most of the content": this is even difficult for research  
publications because publishers have different policies for open  
access (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm). I am in  
favor of a public Open Access repository for all(!) our IKS  
publications (direct file storage or link to another Open Access  
repository). This means that each author has to clear the rights for  
his/her article (tech reports, submitted papers, pre-print, or final).  
All major publishers has some kind of Open Access policy. This is  
different for conferences. Here we could make a list of conferences  
and identify their Open Access policies and steps how to clear OA  
licenses of publications.

For our deliverables we might have to identify upfront which  
deliverables cannot be published under a particular Open Access / CC  
license terms.

My suggestion for CC license: non-commercial, do not allow  
modifications, jurisdiction: Austria? / Belgium?

> • Licensing for Software: Recommendations for why the IKS project  
> should licence project content under the Simplified BSD licence.

Modified BSD (BSD excluding ad note) is one of many choices (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html 
). For some reasons I would be in favor of the Apache License but this  
is just my opinion. This discussion takes some time.

> • Privacy Policy for Websites: This document tells site visitors how  
> the IKS project collects and uses the data that the IKS websites  
> gather from them. The policy is supported with a usage guide to help  
> Salzburg Research and IKS project participants avoid violating the  
> privacy policy.
> • Legal Disclaimer and Limitations for the Websites: This document  
> tells visitors what risks they may encounter on the IKS websites,  
> notes that Salzburg Research and the IKS participants accept as  
> little liability as possible for risks encountered.

We don't we reduce this to "no liability"? Software under OSS/Free  
license schemes exclude liability. Contents under CC licenses work the  
same way. Hence, if we stick with some OSS/Free software license  
scheme and CC licenses for contents, we should be only liable for  
things that a governed by overarching national or international laws.

> • Site Licensing Policy: This document outlines what content is and  
> is not licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence and  
> what terms contributors to the website must licence their  
> contributions.
>
> The agreement is currently under discussion and review by Salzburg  
> Research's legal counsel and by the IKS consortium partners. You can  
> join in the discussion by replying to this discussion thread in the  
> IKS Community mailing list.

These are my initial thoughts.

I appreciate this initiative.

Wolfgang

>
> Best Regards
>
> -- 
> John Pereira
> Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft
> Information Society Research
> Jakob-Haringer Strasse 5/II
> 5020 Salzburg
> Austria
>
> email   john.pereira at salzburgresearch.at
> phone   +43 (0)662 2288 247
> skype j_g_pereira
> mobile +43 (0) 660 1227 480
> fax     +43 (0)662 2288 222
>
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