Hi Stef! On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 11:02, Stef Verlinden <stef at vivici.nl> wrote: > Personally I would like to advocate a CC-BY-SA license: everybody is allowed > to use and modify the content as long as they attribute the author (BY part) > and if If one alters, transforms, or builds upon this work, one may > distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this > one (SA part). For more > information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
In many cases I like the idea of SA (Share Alike) as a way of spreading (forcing?) openness to more areas, especially when it comes to certain software settings, but regarding the openEHR specifications and archetypes I'd suggest using just CC-BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ) in order to avoid hard questions regarding what "non-open" things are to be regarded as derivative works, see examples below. We probably want openEHR to be used in all kinds of mixed private/public settings. In august 2008 I some of us had an off-list discussion regarding archetype licensing I quote myself (since I do not know if I have permission to quote others in that discussion), note that the quoted text below regards archetypes, not the openEHR specifications... "What kind of value do you believe the SA requirement will add in the case of archetypes? SA does not require you to actively submit anything to any process, just to license your derivative work under the same license to whoever happens to get hold of it somehow. People will submit works to a any review processes they find valuable, and most likely that will include openEHR's public process. Requiring SA in addition to BY might add value or it might mostly add complications and hard-to-interpet situations regarding what a derivative work is. Is data entered using the archetype a derivative work? Is a template or screen-form based on the archetype a derivative work? Is a book using the archetype in an example a derivative work? A specialization of an archetype intended for top-secret medical research is most likely a derivative work, is that a problem or not? It is issues like these that get companies uneasy regarding using things with SA-licencing-schemes (such as GPL) in some situations. Another question is if SA is necessary in an openEHR-based health record exchange system. If you want to exchange archetyped data you're probably in most cases requested to supply the used archetype too anyway. There may very well be good things in having BY-SA instead of only BY, but could you please clarify what you had in mind?" ...that ends the quote from 2008. Regarding the specifications additional questions like these arise with SA: - Can you write a commercial (i.e. a non CC-BY-SA) book or commercial presentation slides about openEHR? - Is an openEHR software implementation based on stubs autogenerated from openEHRs UML files to be considered a derivative work that can not be "closed" source code? Can it be released under e.g. Apache, MIT, or BSD license or not? Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik.sundvall at liu.se (previously erisu at imt.liu.se) http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: +46-13-227579
