Bits & bobs/is shared vision more important than a specific license?
- WikiSym finished today. I would have loved to have gone; I hope more reports from there filter through various blogs.
- She’s Geeky is also on and it’s another event I would have loved to attended, but sadly wrong hemipshere, wrong continent. Luckily Liz Henry is attending and blogging (and also doing a presentation on wikis I believe, pity there’s not more wikichix there).
- Another interesting event is Pop!Tech which has just wound up in Maine. Check out the dozens of ‘pop-casts’ that they’ve made available — it really makes a difference for “those following along at home”. If you watch a good one, let me know; Gerard recommended Erin McKean to me and she is funny, passionate, free-culture-literate and geeky. So really a cool person. :)
- Wikimedia Sweden is almost really official. Congratulations folks!
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Heather Ford recently posted an update on iCommons which led to a Declaration on Open Education. She made this comment:
The fact that the first, great draft of the ‘Cape Town Open Education Declaration’ has already been circulated, the fact that its impact was not ‘watered down’ by this “dispute” [about NC or not NC], and the fact that this group has recognised that standing together in our shared vision of what education should look like in the future is more important than the (important but less important) differences of opinion about copyright licences. This is a conclusion that I had long ago but didn’t know how to express: this movement has very little to do with copyright and everything to do with people; it has very little to do with being free to share content and everything to do with sharing perspectives and fellowship.
Hmmm. I don’t know how to feel about this. I would like to be convinced on this point. But currently each time I see some cool new project launched under CC-BY-NC my heart sinks a little. I don’t see a way around the conclusion that the Creative Commons NC clause especially creates a divide among content that maybe could have been avoided. If CC educated people more about how damaging a NC clause can be. If CC helped let individuals see their place in a long and evolved tradition of free culture. Maybe if CC didn’t offer it at all in the first place….
And when I read about someone who wants to release a ‘free software library’ under BY-ND terms I really think, someone missed the boat here… how did we let that happen?
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OTRS & the permissions problem CaFeConf 2007; unacademic knowledge
