Erwin Tenhumberg wrote:
I just took a look at your case study survey document. Charles is right, the layout looks really nice and professional!
:-D Glad you like it.
I have a few questions/suggestions:
1.) If I was the owner or spokesperson of a company, I would be less interested in the license of the survey and the license for the content provided by me, but I'd like to know how the content would be used. For example, I might want to know where the content might show up in the end and in what context.
Yeah, I see your point. We also need some kind of waver form (or so I hear). I guess that this information would be part of the waver. Maybe the waver will replace the current license information.
BTW, why did you choose the Creative Commons license?
The first benefit of Creative Commons licenses is that they are simple, well known, fairly well understood licenses (there are a lot of eyes on the CC). This is important to non-lawyers. The fact that they are used by so many people helps ensure a "reasonable" interpretation of the license. Compare this with any "custom" license we could use.
Also, in my case, *I* understand the CC licenses best. I've reviewed their licenses and discussed it at length with the CC community.
The next reason is that they are easy to apply. They place a very minimal burden on everyone. The attribution requirement is not a big burden (a footnote will do, or a brief mention at the end of the form). Compare this with, for example:
1) The JCA, where you need to share your copyright with Sun, as well as print a piece of paper and physically mail it accross the world to California.
2) The PDL, where the license has to accompany the document. Can you imagine filling out a form and then seing a 4-page license at the end? Worse yet, the PDL requires you to keep a log of changes done to the document. This can be quite burdensome.
> attention to the license in the past. Nevertheless, the > "You must give the original author credit." seems to > be strange to me for a living/working document like this!?
A few things:
1) OOoAuthors is using a CC license right now, and it's worked well so far. In fact, it's a significant improvement over what we had before (PDL).
2) The PDL /also/ has a credit requirement. Worse yet, the PDL's requirement is more strict because you have to keep a list of exactly what changes were made by each person.
2.) If we want to use the survey data for statistical
purposes too, we might want to use ranges and options
for the number of employees and the industries.
What ranges would you suggest?
3.) Since the Sun logo was included in the XML spec and the
default splash screen I'm a bit hesitant about making
the following comment, but I think we should be very
careful about where we include company logos
and URL's in order to avoid a proliferation of
logos and attributions.
Well... the obvious response is, if Sun can do it, why not DDGTS? :-)
Notice that the logo is very discrete. I put it in the footer, and reduced the font-size to make it discrete. But if we're going to use a CC license, we do have to put some attribution. I actually spent a while rewriting the attribution to make it as short and discrete as possible, while still allowing people to reach the copyright holder and meet the attribution requirement.
This is even more true for documents to be distributed
by a variety of people and companies and documents
where different people from different companies have
contributed.
But this form is only provided by one company. It is a solo job.
If I added three questions, would that
mean that the Sun logo got added, too? What if
Novell and Red Hat contributed another five
questions?
A few thoughts:
1) I think that such a small contribution would fall under fair use. For example, fixing a typo doesn't make you co-author.
2) But I see your point. But please keep in mind that the CC doesn't say "you must include a logo". It says "attribution". So, for example, the rewrite could say "survey by DDGTS, Sun and Red Hat". That would do.
3) Compare this with the alternative. If we used the PDL, we would have to attach the license, we would *still* have to add a mention of Sun, Novell and Red Hat, except that it would be more voluminous since it would be accompanied by a list of which questions you added.
Certainly, the CC licenses aren't perfect. But they beat anything else I found.
4.) Question 6 might create some resistance among smaller
companies. "to establish your credibility with our
audience" does not sound to encouraging to SMB's who
might be one of our largest user groups.
That was probably the hardest question to phrase. It went through several reviews. What we have is better than anything else we found. But at the end, Justin, Adam, Jean and I were happy with the phrasing.
5.) I find the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, ...) approach
a bit weird in this context, but maybe that's just
my personal taste. Especially the "threats" questions
feels kind of strange. I would phrase it more in the
way of "What do you like/dislike?" or "What makes
your life easier or more difficult?"
But that's not the same as a "threat". I'll think about a way of revising that section.
6.) In the questions 4 and 5 you suggest that companies
have improved their profitability and that they
reduced their risks.
You're getting *really* nit-picky now. It's not like we're forcing people to fill in every box, or like they can't say "OOo didn't help out at all". Seriously, if you are doing a case study, you would base it on a company that has good things to say about OOo.
7.) I would be cautious about including the link to DDGTS
under eLearning, because twenty other companies from
this list might want to get listed too, which
obviously is not feasible. At least it should say
"e.g. www.digitaldistribution.com".
Why would 20 other companies be listed? This document was the product of just one company, and that's the one that gets listed.
Cheers, Daniel.
-- Senior Representative Digital Distribution Global Training Services Pty. Ltd. Premier OpenOffice.org and StarOffice Online Training providers http://www.digitaldistribution.com
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