Open Source, Closed Talk

I've attached an interesting rant below. It comes from Larry Marso and talks about the trends of content moving off USENET and onto Web sites like Slashdot. Usenet sort of automatically grants the right to distribute, but the Web isn't necessarily like that. (As a side note, among the many features planned for Slashcode is an NNTP gateway, which will hopefully address this problem, as well as allow people to use it to read Slashdot ;) Larry Marso writes "The trend of Linux-related discussion and development moving off USENET and mailing lists and on to Web Site "forum" facilities is disturbing. It is bad for the open source movement and the future of Linux. VA Sourceforge is a case in point.

Internet users who "post" articles using USENET or mailing lists are inherently granting third parties the right to repackage and retransmit their words into various formats. For example, Deja and Remarq take the legal position that they have the right to rate, sort, emphasize and discard USENET posted content, and retransmit what they consider "best", without obtaining any license or permission from the authors of the content. Seems perfectly reasonable, even to their legal departments and investors!

So long as Linux related discussions take place in such open forums, third parties have wide latitude to do the same, potentially adding a lot of value -- identifying highly relevent and instructive postings, questions asked and answered, tips for new users, a record of new ideas and suggestions and more. Enter a site like VA Sourceforge. True, they are providing all sorts of value added services. An open source project conducted there has certain advantages. The general discussion forums there too, may be useful. However, in each case, the participants are asked (in the legal "terms and conditions") to grant the Web site permission to use the forum content, but no permission is requested or accepted on behalf of third parties.

The bottom of every page says "Forum comments are owned by the poster. The rest is copyright VA Linux Systems." Remember that the GPL may apply to code, but it's irrelevent to talk. If I see an insightful discussion taking place on the Web site, or in the site's archives months after the fact, I can't take it, package it, sort or filter it, and retransmit this in another form or medium. Not unless I go back and obtain permission and a license from *each and every participant* in the discussions in question. So, in an important sense, VA is taking ownership of the content; no one else will be able practically to get the rights to reproduce, recycle and extend the content. Open source, but "closed talk".

Is there a solution? Yes. A quick and direct solution would be for a site like VA Sourceforge to permit users to obtain any and all contributed content an automated mailing list facility. Just asking users who are posting content for the right to retransmit, if done properly, could move us back to the status quo ante. However, I suspect they won't, because they want the site traffic. There is potentially a lesson here for Slashdot as well. I suspect that I can't take what's posted at Slashdot and retransmit what I might consider "best" like I could, for example, with the Linux kernel mailing list, can I? This whole trend toward Web site forums and facilities is leaving significant, valuable intellectual property rights in the hands of companies valued in the billions of U.S. dollars, and rendering it uneconomical for others of us to get the rights ourselves. Potentially, this is denying the Linux community valuable future resources.

To provide copies of useful information I'd seen at these sites, I'd practically have to construct an elaborate Auctionwatch or Bidders Edge system, and point people to links at VA Sourceforge or Slashdot. (And then what, will the sites respond with lawsuits like eBay?) Until these sites establish new policies of collecting intellectual property rights for the whole community, instead of just for themselves, some of the most exciting and important content in this "new era" for Linux is no longer open to all -- certainly not the way we all mean when we say "open". "

Comments

Please, please, please give us NNTP

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

The idea of getting /. discussions mirrored on to an NNTP server is the greatest idea I've heard in a long time. I sure hope this improvement makes it.

I first started reading /. in mid-1998, which puts me fairly near the start of the usage curve. My user # is certainly in the top 10%, and by now maybe in the top 1% (this is hardly to brag: I only contribute to threads occassionally, and have only a moderate karma thereby).

Anyway, one of the main hesitations I had in spending much time on /. at the beginning was that the discussion capabilities were *SO FAR* behind the Usenet in terms of speed, usability (in my favorite news client), archivability, searchability, and in all the other things that make NNTP great. Over the last year, /. has added some nice features (the moderation, for a big one). But even still, it doesn't come anywhere close to Usenet in terms of convenience. (slashdot is still occassionally way too slow, and there is no way to browse discussion, respond, etc. offline).

This was discussed recently in the "death of Usenet" thread, and I guess a lot of correct points were made there. But I really think the *open* and distributed format of NNTP is the very best thing the internet has created. It is open in a lot of ways, too. The discussion is inherently public (if not unambiguously "public-domain") in a way even /. style boards are not. And it is an open standard that allows everyone to have their favorite newsreader that encorporates all the features they find most useful (again unlike a web-board). News feeds are easily searchable plain-ASCII, which is wonderful (which web-boards are not, even for comments posted as ASCII).

A distant second here would be a majordomo or listserv type mirror of /.. But all else pales next to NNTP.

Re:Solution is simple - public license on "submit"

[lsmarso]

Larry Marso here, again. A few words were dropped from my posting, leaving some ambiguity.

I am proposing that Slashdot and VA Sourceforge immediately make available their web hosted forums via a majordomo style mailing list, with every participant at the web site giving up as many legal rights as any participant in any mailing list. Permit users access to the full ascii content of whatever is posted to forums via e-mail, without ever having to visit the site (except maybe to sign up).

Different 3rd party "mailing list archiving" sites, which use html interfaces (ugh), already take the position they have the inherent right to be one more manner of the redistribution contemplated by the mailing list method of moving content around.

One can squabble about whether this would hold up in court, but let's move back to status quo ante: put web hosted forums on the same playing field as majordomo mailing lists.

This is a much more direct solution than writing a new GPL something or other licence, although maybe that would be useful in the longer term.

How about something like...

[zantispam]

...those `GPL for Books' kind of licenses?

Combine that with an option below the Comment window (like Slashdot's) to `Include comment in SCPL (SlashComment Public License)'. That way, the poster still owns the comment *and* gives permission for others to use it in a manner consistant with the SCPL.

This would also allow people to opt in and out, legally, and at will. Make the option avaliable to all (AC and those with accounts) and, voila! Problem solved.

This would also make things easier for posters. Remember the _Jane's_ happening? There were people who were quoted and not given credit (at first. IIRC, all of those problems got sorted out). With something like the SCPL, the license writers could include a clause that made it mandatory to give due credit.

The best part about this is that it's a vouluntary system. Since it's a contract that you knowingly enter into, there's no problems with comments beig `stolen', taken out of context, or abused.

Comments?

Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?