<nettime> OpenContent License (OPL) + annotations

[Pit Schultz <pit@midas.in-berlin.de>]

OpenContent License (OPL)

Version 1.0, July 14. 1998

[apperently by

This document outlines the principles underlying the
OpenContent (OC) movement and may be redistributed
provided it remains unaltered. For legal purposes,this
document is the license under which OpenContent is
made available for use.


The original version of this document may be found at
http://www.opencontent.org/opl.html


LICENSE


Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distributing, and
Modifying


Items other than copying, distributing, and modifying
the Content with which this license was distributed
(such as using, etc.) are outside the scope of this
license.


1. You may copy and distribute exact replicas of the
OpenContent (OC) as you receive it, in any medium,
provided that you conspicuously and appropriately
publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice
and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices
that refer to this License and to the absence of any
warranty; and give any other recipients of the OC a
copy of this License along with the OC. You may at
your option charge a fee for the media and/or handling
involved in creating a unique copy of the OC for use
offline, you may at your option offer instructional
support for the OC in exchange for a fee, or you may at
your option offer warranty in exchange for a fee. You
may not charge a fee for the OC itself. You may not
charge a fee for the sole service of providing access to
and/or use of the OC via a network (e.g. the Internet),
whether it be via the world wide web, FTP, or any other
method.


2. You may modify your copy or copies of the
OpenContent or any portion of it, thus forming works
based on the Content, and distribute such
modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these
conditions:


a) You must cause the modified content to carry
prominent notices stating that you changed it, the
exact nature and content of the changes, and the date
of any change.


b) You must cause any work that you distribute or
publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived
from the OC or any part thereof, to be licensed as a
whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms
of this License, unless otherwise permitted under
applicable Fair Use law.


These requirements apply to the modified work as a
whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not
derived from the OC, and can be reasonably considered
independent and separate works in themselves, then
this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works.
But when you distribute the same sections as part of a
whole which is a work based on the OC, the
distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this
License, whose permissions for other licensees extend
to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part
regardless of who wrote it. Exceptions are made to this
requirement to release modified works free of charge
under this license only in compliance with Fair Use law
where applicable.


3. You are not required to accept this License, since
you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants
you permission to copy, distribute or modify the OC.
These actions are prohibited by law if you do not
accept this License. Therefore, by distributing or
translating the OC, or by deriving works herefrom, you
indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or
translating the OC.


NO WARRANTY


4. BECAUSE THE OPENCONTENT (OC) IS
LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO
WARRANTY FOR THE OC, TO THE EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE
OC "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK OF USE
OF THE OC IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE OC PROVE
FAULTY, INACCURATE, OR OTHERWISE
UNACCEPTABLE YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
NECESSARY REPAIR OR CORRECTION.


5. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY
APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER
PARTY WHO MAY MIRROR AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE
THE OC AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO
YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL,
SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY
TO USE THE OC, EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR
OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.



<<< annotation A by pit@desk.nl

the success story of the 'cathedral and the bazaar'
continues, and so the distribution of linux does.
open is just another word for public, instead of
proprietary standards free software and the
internet is based on shared intellectual property.
and why not apply the exchange rules of source code
for reliable software to other textual products?
with a maximum of circulation and access at a minimum
of price old 'content castles' and mega-publishing houses
get new opponents based on completly different
business models, loser-friendly, semi-illegal, because
the good ideas (and textes) are not always the one which
win.
the "new economy" is tending to repeat the old one,
hardcore capitalism of early industrialisation.
this is the 'third sector' model: as both, the state
nor corporate structures can provide the needed
structrues, the interzone has to come with the
solution.
Will commercialisation and hybrid business structures
"kill linux?" Did they kill "the net"? Or does a
mixed economy is just the ideal model.


<<< annotation B by pit@desk.nl

problematic is here maybe, that OpenContent it's
based on an analogy. it uses a practical knowledge
of what works for text, as source code production
within a highly commercialized environment. the
skills of writing in natural language are much
more distributed then writing programming languages,
so there is already a lot of 'opencontent' without
declaration. the question is rather if content is
not 'open' by default and has to be marked as
proprietary if it is not falling under fair use.
for he producers maybe the more elegant code, the
esthetics and not the utilitarianism is the key. but
still the problem is 'how' a 'OpenContent' movement
should get organized to be sustainable and not turn
against itself after a phase of establishment.
Who has to decide what is 'open content'? only the
authors? its not easy to reach them always. in fact
what's on the net is mostly already open content.
because the 'public bit' is set.
The Free Software Foundation gives a more
puristic example, while companies like Netscape
and Corel use a tuned Open Source model to be
competitive to Microsoft. They are companies
and not really organized as NGO like movements,
with the usual promo material, campaings, more
or less convincing rethorics.
the pure GNU in fact, works because many people
use it and make the programm code more reliable.
GNU leads in many cases to a mixed economy,
while the underlaying operating system and the
basic components are free and special applications
might be commercial. organisations which watch
and coordinate the production of public domain
software and shareware are still not around yet.
Within text production there is still no
runtime environment like the computer, no
global citation tools, and true hypertext,
and with the 'postmodernism' of the last 20 years
one can look back onto the results of
appropriating digital technolgies to other
cultural technologies, like architecture,
art, writing and pop music. A question would
be if science, especially bioscience could
work under the open source model and if there
could be a kind of common law that certain
sources have to be open, public, non-commercial.
If an (genetically produced) medicine against AIDS
will be found, how African countries should be able
to pay it if the 'formula' is not available for free?

(thanks to mieg van eden who sent me the link)
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