Talk:Archive:Should we permit or disallow commercial use of CZ-originated articles?

I wonder if the issue should be expanded a bit. Certainly the title gives the impression of a wider discussion.

As regards commercial use there are two discussions to have. One is, should the standard license of Citizendium allow commercial use? The second is, should the Citizendium Foundation sell "proprietary" licenses to commercial entities? The two are not independent. Various software companies (notably Trolltech, with their Qt library) have a business plan that includes releasing work under the GPL (which allows commercial redistribution) but also selling proprietary licenses to firms who do not wish to be held to the restrictions of the GPL.

The various aspects of this are all in place in the article but it should be made clearer at the start, no? —Joseph Rushton Wakeling 21:27, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Assume the type of commercial use permitted or disallowed is circumscribed exactly by whatever differences are found between CC-by-sa and CC-by-nc. --Larry Sanger 21:29, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Free for all, no one should be able to profit off it

I don't have a reason for why I believe this, but this feels "right" to me. I just think that this encyclopedia should be free for everyone and that no one should ever be able to make a profit from it. I think it should be volunteer based. The writers should be able to trace their work but since there is no money to be made, their rights to their work means very little. Articles are written in collaboration. The reward writers should receive is that they helped provide free, accurate, information to the world. In the ideal situation there could be 10 or more writers contributing to one sentence. Why do they need property rights? Why does Citizendium need property rights? Why would you sell this if it is available for free? Are you going to try to trick us later and make this a fee-to-access this encyclopedia? Are you going to sell this to Encylopedia Britanica? I think there should be a way to restrict others from profiting off our work, so they can't print it and sell it. The should be required to reference us if they use us as a source. I don't care if wikipedia uses our work. We should do whatever helps the greater good - provide quality information and have it be done in a way so that people who are skeptical of Wikipedia will respect Citizendium. -Tom Kelly (Talk) 00:08, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

I suspect Tom is expressing a very common sentiment with the first part of his post here. Particularly with the first sentence. It may not be a completely rationally conceived notion, but if it is going to be widespread among potential contributors, it certainly deserves to be taken into consideration. --Joe Quick (Talk) 01:29, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Too long

This section "There IS good reason to prefer to NOT let Wikipedia use our articles (with rebuttal to above)" is simply too long. --Larry Sanger 08:09, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Just to check, are we allowed/encouraged to rewrite others' material here, if it's in the interests of clarifying the summary? I'm reluctant to do this without "official" approval since I don't want people to get offended. —Joseph Rushton Wakeling 12:10, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Sure, why not? It's a wiki. --Larry Sanger 12:11, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

CC-by-nc or CC-by-nc-sa?

It's been noted on the discussion forums that when people say "by-nc" they actually are actually using it as shorthand for the CC-by-nc-sa license, which includes the share-alike clause to ensure that derivatives cannot be distributed on different terms. In this document we should specify exactly what we mean — so what is it? —Joseph Rushton Wakeling 15:54, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Gee, I just assumed that bc-nc meant by-nc-sa. So, yes, presumably we're talking about CC-by-nc-sa. --Larry Sanger 17:08, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Pro Con List Commercial vs. Non

Instead of saying arguments for both, I'd rather see a pro / con list made... Then I'll read the arguments. Instead of discovering the pros and cons in the arguments. Break it down for the people who don't know the ins and outs of licenses. For example, why do we need a commercial license to allow wikipedia to use our work? Why don't we just let them copy it and edit it how they please... as long as they say that it originally came from us... like we do for wikipedia articles? What are pros and cons of GNU FDL for example? What is so bad about GNU FDL that we are opposed to adopting it? Why are we worried about people selling our work when it is available for free? Who is seriously going to pay for something when it is free online? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 16:26, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

For various legal and operational reasons, corporations will put up big bucks for stuff that is free elsewhere. --Larry Sanger 17:09, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Can you give an example? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 17:12, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Question.

the quote below is under this title Argument: A noncommercial license is incompatible with Wikipedia.

" Reply: There's no good reason to prefer to let Wikipedia use our articles

We are not in competition with WP, nor are we a branch of WP. What we are is a separate but similar project, with the same general goal of producing a free public encyclopedia by community writing and revision, but the specific goal of producing one with controlled expert review. There are good reasons to have both, and therefore they should both be done optimally after their different fashions. We want our project to be as good as possible, so we wish to use good attributed copyright-free material from other sources, subject to our editing and review. We also want to encourage their project to be as good as possible, and therefore want them to use whatever of our material may serve their good purposes, realizing that they will be subject to their processes of editing. "