Open Content



Sister

The OpenContent license can be found at http://www.opencontent.org/

"OpenContent is freely available for modification, use, and redistribution under a license similar to those used by the Open Source / Free Software community. In plain English, the license relieves the author of any liability or implication of warranty, grants others permission to use the Content in whole or in part, and insures that the original author will be properly credited when Content is used. It also grants others permission to modify and redistribute the Content if they clearly mark what changes have been made, when they were made, and who made them. Finally, the license insures that if someone else bases a work on OpenContent, that the resultant work will be made available as OpenContent as well. " -- From the OpenContent webpage


I like the idea of an AsynchronousConferencingSystem in which the content is under an OpenSourceLicense. Some Wiki(s) have already borrowed from software development VersionControl tools. Let's borrow the very successful practice of using an OpenSourceLicense.

In particular, a Wiki with OpenSourceLicense(d) content might work like this. At the top of every edit page, where in many Wikis it now just says "Save", we put a button that says "Save: by activating this button, I hereby place my contributions to this page in the public domain." Second, In addition to serving our content (the Wiki pages) via a Wiki server, we serve it via FTP so that it is possible for a person to download the whole thing with one command. The person can then without fear of infringement lawsuits press a CD or operate a Wiki server containing the content. Or simply have the security of knowing that her contributions to the Wiki will always be right there on her hard drive; that is, she's not dependent on the operator of the Wiki to keep her writings alive. Given the ability to do these things, participants in our Wiki will probably come to have a strong sense of ownership, or at least stakeholdership in the Wiki, increasing the quality of the writings there.

--RichardEnwol

 

Last edited January 9, 2001
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