Casserly steps down as CEO of Creative Commons. Now Paul Brest is interim CEO

You might remember the announcement a few months ago that Cathy Casserly will be stepping down as CEO of Creative Commons this year.
In fact, at the beginning of January CC officially opened the search for the new CEO. Today, at the end of February (exactly three years after the entry of Cathy in CC) the CC blog publish a farewell message by her, explaining that Paul Brest, CC board chair, has stepped up as interim CEO.

My journey with CC has had different segments, contexts, and textures. What I have found so rewarding during this leg as CEO is working closely with our deeply talented and dedicated staff, regional coordinators, affiliates, partners, and supporters.
Together, we have made tremendous progress to create a global footprint of sharing, legally. We continue to extend our reach into critical communities – learning, science, data, and culture – and educate the world about the power of open. And while we have not yet reached our collective mission, we have advanced, and will continue to do so. Here at CC, we have worked hard over the past months to ensure the CEO transition is smooth. The board has the search well underway and Paul Brest, CC board chair, has stepped up as interim CEO. My profound thanks to Paul, both personally and on behalf of the broader community, for his unyielding leadership and support.

So the search for the new CEO is still open. We have to wait some more time to know which direction CC will take in the next years.

Less may be more: Copyleft, -right and the case law on APIs on both sides of the Atlantic

Abstract: Like any relatively young areas of law, copyright on software is surrounded by some legal uncertainty. Even moreso in the context of copyleft open source licenses, since these licenses in some respects aim for goals that are the opposite of 'regular' software copyright law. This article provides an analysis of the inheritance effect of the GPL-family of copyleft software licenses (the GPL, LGPL and the AGPL) from a mostly copyright perspective as well as an analysis of the extent to which the SAS/WPL case affects this family of copyleft software licenses. In this article the extent to which the GPL and AGPL inheritance clauses have a wider effect than those of the LGPL is questioned, while both the SAS/WPL jurisprudence and the US Google case seem to affirm the LGPL's “dynamic linking” criterium.

A paper by Walter van Holst published in IFOSS Law Review.

Table of content

• Introduction
• Legal framework as provided by the GPL family
• Roles of the GPL family of licenses
• Bare licenses based on copyright law
• Analysis and application to libraries
• Linking mechanisms
• Transformation and derivation in case law
• Conclusion

READ THE PAPER

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License and attribution
This paper was published in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, Volume 5, Issue 1 (MARCH 2013). It originally appeared online at http://www.ifosslr.org.
This article should be cited as follows:
Holst, Walter van  (2013) 'Less may be more: Copyleft, -right and the case law on APIs on both sides of the Atlantic', International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, 5(1), pp 5 – 14
DOI: 10.5033/ifosslr.v5i1.72
Copyright © 2013 Walter van Holst.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons NL (Netherlands) 2.0 licence, no derivative works, attribution, CC-BY-ND available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/uk/.
As a special exception, the author expressly permits faithful translations of the entire document into any language, provided that the resulting translation (which may include an attribution to the translator) is shared alike. This paragraph is part of the paper, and must be included when copying or translating the paper.

Survey: Most Italian Internet Users Think Ignoring Copyright Harms Publishers, But Not Society As A Whole

One of the heartening recent developments in the world of digital copyright is that we have moved on from manifestly biased surveys about the evils of piracy and how the solution to everything is harsher punishment for infringement and longer copyright terms, to independent analyses that seek to understand rather than judge and lecture. There's also been a ... [continue]

An article by Glyn Moody for Techdirt.com. Read the article here.

Copyright 2.0: Interests and Rules

source of the pic

Let us think for a moment about the set of rules which would appear to be appropriate to meet the demands of creators operating along the short route.

1. The Interests.

In the market based model it was essential for creators and even more so for businesses to control and restrict access to works, as the monopoly granted by expansive exclusive rights enabled them to charge whatever price the market would bear.
However, this would not appear to be the goal of creators currently operating along the short route. The great majority of them, be it 9 out of 10 or 95 out of 100, do not make a living out of “sales” of “copies” of their works; they earn their livelihood in another activity or business and devote a portion – often a  very large portion – of their spare time to creating, in a way which may give them a bit of extra income, professional credit and recognition which may have positive spill - over effects in their main line or just fun (or a combination of the three).
Even when the creators operating along the short route are professionally engaged in the creation of works, which is usually not the case, their business model usually is based on income flows different from the sale of copies as such. It would appear that there is a shift whereby even singers and songwriters increasingly rely on performances, tours, endorsements, merchandising and their likes rather than sales of albums and tracks.
This is the business model which the Grateful Dead pioneered, possibly taking a clue from open source software and IBM, and is currently expanding to an increasing number of business. So that the eminent economist Paul Krugmann a few years ago made the case that the demise of reliance on income based on “hard” copies was being generalized and, making his case, quipped that in the long run we will all be the Grateful Dead.
What is important for creators engaged along the short route is, it would appear, that their work can be disseminated as widely as possible, on two conditions: first, that the work is correctly attributed to them, and second, that
the creators may, if they so choose, reserve the right to prevent third parties
to make a commercial profit out of their work unless this is agreed to by the creator herself.

2. The Rules.

If this is so, then what may currently be needed is a new kind of copyright, which we may, if you wish, label Copyright 2.0. I submit that the new system would have four basic features. Old copyright, or Copyright 1.0, would still be available; but it would have to be claimed for by the creator at the onset, e.g. by inserting the old copyright notice, ©, as the US did in the past, before accessing the Berne Convention.

If no notice was given, Copyright 2.0 would apply; and this would give creators just one right, the right to attribution.
The notice could also be added after creation, but then it would only have the effect of giving exclusivity against specified non authorized uses (in particular:
subsequent commercial uses).
The Copyright 1.0 protection given by the original notice could be withdrawn, and may be it should be deemed withdrawn after a specified period of time (e.g. the 14 years of the original copyright protection), unless an extension period (of another 14 years) is specifically requested.
What is the purpose of the exercise I just sketched out? Well, I confess that, even a couple of years after airing this proposal, I am not so totally sure after all that the four features I just described are really what is appropriate for the needs of our societies and their creators.
The point I am making, however, is that thinking along these lines at least allows us to conceptualize how the different sets of rules correspond to the specific needs of the creators who create works along the long and short route. We assumed that Copyright 1.0 should survive; and we may anticipate that this is likely to be resorted to by creators (and businesses) choosing to operate along the long route. Indeed, the ultimate goal is not to displace old copyright, which seems to be alive and well in many situations, but to add to the menu a second possibility, Copyright 2.0, which should be better tailored to the characters of production and distribution of works prevailing in the current digital environment.
This line of reasoning might also help us in asking the next question. Which set of rules would then operate in each given situation? Well, in some way I already replied to this question: creators should opt-in for Copyright 1.0 at the time of the original release of their work; otherwise the new and more flexible Copyright 2.0 would operate as a default set of provisions.
This is why in the past I characterized this approach as “Lessig by default” or, in a less personalized way, “Creative Commons by default”. The idea behind the approach is that the very successful uptake of Creative Commons licenses and other copyleft licenses by creators operating along the short route shows that out there, in the digital prairies and wilderness, there is a very large number indeed of crea tors who prefer to reserve only some rights rather than all rights; and that the time has come for legal systems to recognize this fact of life by creating a regime in which downstream freedom is the rule and a system under which creators may have the option to reserve some rights or, if they like, all the old Copyright 1.0 rights, only if they wish and say so, giving appropriate notice.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This is an excerpt of "Consume and Share: Making Copyright Fit for the Digital Agenda" by Prof. Marco Ricolfi (2011); under a CC by license.
See the entire paper (with all the footnotes and references) here.

Open source alternatives for small businesses

Is it safe to use? What alternatives do I have? Is it easy to install?
These were some of the questions asked by Amandeep, a New Delhi based owner of a small scale clothing company, when I pitched to him a few open source solutions that could make his day-to-day operations more efficient. For someone without any IT background (but a sharp business sense), these were brilliant and relevant questions. The answers to these questions won't just help Amandeep, but if shared broadly may help reduce the apprehension of a significant number of small scale business owners, especially in India. My interactions have shown that a lot of these businesses are looking to grow, enhance their productivity, and most importantly, save costs.

Approximately 7,500 miles away from Amandeep in New Delhi lives Nabeel Hussain. Nabeel, a graduate of Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre, is a new product development and digital marketing specialist actively engaged in Waterloo, one of the top entrepreneurial ecosystems in the world. As an entrepreneur, he is always faced with the challenge of managing limited resources while building traction. He has a plethora of technology solutions at his disposal, and the technical know-how to utilize these solutions. Additionally, he has a robust support system to advise and guide him to the best available solution that fits his needs. For Nabeel, open source solutions provide an inexpensive alternative for crafting early stage prototypes for his ideas and validating them with customers. From using WordPress and its library of plugins, to venturing into OpenShift Origin and Joomla, he has the knowledge to make use of top notch technology to reduce risk, manager resources, and build traction for his venture.
These two different scenarios indicate a categorical gap in the knowledge of entrepreneurs when it comes to adopting open source solutions. Although there is some geographic gap between the entrepreneurs in the developed and the developing world, as well as a gap that spawns from business exposure/experience, the problem is wider than that. There is a difference in productivity and efficiency between entrepreneurs who utilize open source solutions and those who do not. The situation becomes clear when we look at those small scale business owners who are technology pros versus those who are not.
A significant number of businesses, in India in particular and in the developing world in general, are of a mom-and-pop business nature. Based on my recent interactions with these small scale business owners, I see widespread misconceptions pertaining to open source software. The questions that Amandeep from New Delhi asked me are critical in nature. In order for small scale businesses to adopt open source solutions, it is vital to address these misconceptions.

Is open source software really safe?

The question arises from the basic process that is followed to write code using open source way. If any hacker can read your code, then why can't they use the knowledge to their personal benefit? Most of those sorts of malicious attempts fail because there are a lot of committed people looking over the source code, finding problems, and fixing them. More eyes tame bugs quickly. And security by obscurity is no security at all. What strikes me at this point of time are the words of security expert Bruce Schneier, "Public security is always more secure than proprietary security…For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice."
Developing code in an open source fashion is an expression of a technique. Software, in our world, should be treated as a service which can be customized based on the specific needs of a user, rather than merely as a product.
I know a lot of people involved at different levels of open source projects. All of them are driven by their commitment to reach technical and professional excellence, and to add to the existing body of technology knowledge. The entire ecosystem of open source is built on that commitment. The Linux operating system, for example, with its proven track record of stability and security, forms the backbone of complex infrastructures and data centers world over. The same benefits that help Linux and other open source tools succeed at the enterprise level can be reaped by small businesses, too.
A couple of months back, I read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. An otherwise helpful and insightful book, the author seems to host a thought process that open source is contrary to the developers' right to make a profit. A lot of people who think that way do not see the forest for the trees. They see free software, they see Linux, but they miss the multi-billion dollar ecosystem that surrounds open source. Its true that Brian Behlendorf, the person who orchestrated Apache web server, did not make a dime off it, but the immense value that this server has added to the economy and the legions of small to medium size businesses that use this infrastructure is an important contribution. Free software developed by a community is not tantamount to insecurity.

Are there quality alternatives available?

Gone are the days when open source was produced only by the engineers, for the engineers. From word processing to calendar applications to servers and to setting up telephone communication networks, small businesses can benefit hugely from open source solutions. Let us take the example of word processing, an activity that almost all small businesses, irrespective of their field, carry out.
Microsoft Word is the premium software in the area but it is cluttered with features that a lot of small businesses won't ever use. The bloating of Microsoft Word has cost its simplicity. There are easy to use, simple, free, and open source word processors available out their. A few of these that I have been using (and suggesting to small businesses) as an alternative to Microsoft Word are:

1. Apache Open Office: This software primarily consists of six tools for managing office tasks, namely: Writer as a word processor, Calc as a spreadsheet tool, Impress for multimedia presentations, Draw for diagrams and 3D applications, Base as a database tool, and Math for creating mathematical equations.
2. AbiWord: Developed in 1998 with the help of gtkmm, this open source word processor includes both simple word processing features to sophisticated features like multiple views, page columns, and grammar checking.
3. LibreOffice:This is my favorite and always at the top of my recommendation list for anyone looking for a free and efficient word processing suite. Although the features are similiar to those of ApacheOpen Office, LibreOffice is better when it comes to community support.

There are dozens of other excellent alternative solutions to proprietary software and thousands of open source projects that can serve small businesses. It can sometimes be difficult to select the software which best matches specific needs, but there are plenty of people globally willing to help you make those decisions and help take small businesses down the path to an open and productive future.
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Originally posted 17 Feb 2014 by Aseem Sharma under a CC by-sa license; see source.