Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Code for Open Content

After my post on searching Google for documents that are free to share, Egon asked me about how to indicate that on our sites.

Wikispaces does it automatically and looking at the HTML it looks like you just need to add this tag (or whatever Creative Commons License you choose):

< a rel="license" href="http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5">Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License >

I've now added this to the template file of most of my blogs on Blogger.

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2 Comments:

At 12:33 PM, Blogger Bill Hooker said...

That's a great idea; I'll add that to the list of updates I need to make to my blog.

Speaking of open content, your blog header on the RSS feed contains this:

"ANYTHING POSTED HERE IS MADE PUBLIC IMMEDIATELY AND DONATED TO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN . ANYONE MAY USE, EVEN FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, AS LONG AS ATTRIBUTION IS MADE TO THE RELEVANT POSTS IN THIS BLOG"

As I understand it, if you release something into the public domain you relinquish all control, including the right to expect/demand attribution. I think I know exactly what you mean, and would be confident in using something from your blog -- but only because I have prior experience of your views. Someone else might be confused, and feel the need to contact you first -- which is clearly contrary to your intentions.

This is why I am coming to prefer Creative Commons licensing -- not because it's necessarily better than a home-made license, but because it provides a kind of standard; everyone knows what each CC license means, and what they can do with content covered by those licenses.

 
At 9:30 AM, Blogger Jean-Claude Bradley said...

Bill - thanks for the note. You are right that public domain is not an appropriate term in this context and I have changed the description of this blog accordingly.

 

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Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License