#ConsumerPower ? #Commons #Governance #Strategy #ResourceAllocation #CommonsTax #Investments #Reputation #Transparency

Or, let the ( corporate ? ) "consumer" who pays the license choose where to allocate the money to ?

With choice of allocation of funds determined within a specific networked conglomerate of research and development / commons ?

Hence power residing in deciding who would be part, or not, of such network ?

Allocating 1/3 of funds to initial developers ( not in their pockets, but a not for profit pool for re-investing money - with transparent funding , and limits to personal enrichment - ) ?
1/3 distributed evenly to all developers in the network ( hence a defacto funding by joining the network ? )
1/3 decided by the corporate licensee consumer ? ( in a commons that corresponds to his/her preferences and/or strategic interests ? )

Combining it with a reputation based "reversed debt" approach ?

http://cashwiki.org/en/Debt_to_Intention

For which semantic technologies would be used ?
http://sharewiki.org/en/Transaction_Graphs
http://sharewiki.org/en/Transaction_Graphs_2014

@bobhaugen @simontegg i put together this map when we were looking to figure out which license we wanted to put Metamaps out under: http://metamaps.cc/maps/32

As i think was pointed out by Bob earlier, the PPL isn't written for software at all. There's a few licenses that we managed to find that were 'off the beaten path' - these are in the map.

The Visage license basically equates to a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license ported to software.

The Humanitarian license by Inder Coman, if rewritten somehow to refer to the Commons, cooperatives, etc. could potentially serve a similar purpose as the PPL for software.

Also, there is potentially a simpler route, as it is possible to dual-license with AGPL, then permit licenses for companies who do not want to give back to the Commons. There are quite a few companies out there who are doing this, however its not always taken the best by the open source community. There are some sticky questions in relation to governance and extraction of wealth from contributors if its done this way as well.

All these point to a different issue as well - if you've got multiple developers contributing to the code base, is the IP consolidated and held by a single entity or is it distributed? It can't just simply be put 'in the public domain', this isn't even possible legally in some jurisdictions. If it is distributed ownership, for actual litigation purposes (not that I ever want us or anyone else to have to enter into that), there can be no entity which legally can defend those rights if they are violated. This is why FSF makes their contributors assign the IP to the custodian/steward (a non-profit entity).

Here is another structured conversation we're having that is ongoing around IP governance and contributors agreements, because this ties in with the IP and licensing question quite closely - http://metamaps.cc/maps/933

I'll stop here now because I don't want to crowd too much into one post here, but to summarize:

TL:DR
- we didn't use PPL because its not designed for software, but there's other licenses that can potentially be 'hacked' to provide commons-based reciprocity functionality
- someone/some entity's gotta hold the IP in order to actually be able to enforce the CBR of it, otherwise its a bit pointless
- a strategy related to Contributors License Agreements (CLAs) or Contributors Assignment Agreements (CAAs) should be considered, in relation to the license and possible evolution of it.

@ishanshapiro - nice overview of the licensing landscape.

Stacco, Michel and others are working on a new commons reciprocal license, but it won't be ready until next year. You can read about it here:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-short-video-on-commons-based-reciprocity-licenses/2014/09/21
http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-4-value-and-currency/invited-comments/between-copyleft-and-copyfarleft-advance-reciprocity-for-the-commons/

Their opinion is that it is good to adopt the PPL as-is now as a statement of solidarity. If the open apps gang does so, we will do likewise. Might add some language.

Re enforcement: in my opinion, it's only possible by moral suasion and reputation effects on people who care about that. Only way to get to commercial companies with money and lawyers is to become like a patent troll, get some sharks and go into it for blood.

In other words, its mostly a political statement. Which can be useful.

That's from my viewpoint. I expect Metamaps will have a different viewpoint. I remember some long conversations about this stuff with the Dojo gang when they were setting up a foundation and adopting CLAs. They had eyes on enterprise markets, where the legalese matters. We don't.

Thanks for the info @bobhaugen. I agree that its mostly a political statement at this time, and there can definitely be a utility in that. I don't necessarily have too different of a viewpoint on this than you, but I am interested in knowing the possible scenarios of how actually this stuff plays out besides on a 'statement' level.

If Openapp is to grow (and for me as a participant and as a metamaps affiliate to get behind it/contribute), I feel it important that governance is pretty clear, I've read plenty of stories about how by not even having bad intentions, but simply confusing approaches to the license which code is being contributed under, can be a disincentivisation for many developers to collaborate.

in terms of governance, if you do decide to adopt now, know that to change the license going forward is a matter of governance and points to the issue of shared ownership, where everyone who's work is part of it explicitly agrees to changing the license together. If one person doesn't, well it could get sticky for the whole project.

or not, with the code of that contributor is not of critical importance and/or could be rewritten and replaced.

If it is held by one entity, there can be a group decision making process still that is defined (could be 'only with consensus of all contributors', or '2/3 majority' or any other decision-making mode) Not impossible by any means, but it is a consideration worthy of attention.

Just good to scenario out all the implications. Our network as it stands hasn't come to an explicit agreement about this issue, however the vast majority of the code has been written by Connor and so its fairly straightforward at this time. We are thinking about how do we best facilitate the project to grow and evolve by engaging with other developers?

Right now I personally am leaning towards having all the rights to the code held by one person who acts as custodian/steward and defers to a defined governance rubric/framework (until we have an entity which acts as custodian, again with defined governance framework) so that we can remain open to changing our license from AGPL to an evolved AGPL, or a CBR license, or to a more permissive license, if that makes most sense. Each can really be, as you put it, a political statement in one form or another, as well as a incentive or disincentive (depending on the community) for participation, and our approach was that AGPL makes the most sense for the growth and evolution of our network, and the platform, at the current stage, holding the possibility that another license may make the most sense for the growth and evolution of the network at a different stage.

we've been discussing licenses at Bevry: bevry/meta#16. i'm interested in a license (which i realize now is similar to the CBR license) where:

• if you are using the software to build libre software, you may use it for free like a copyleft license
• if you are a not-for-profit or worker-owned business, you may use it for free like a copyfarleft license
• if you are a "contributor"[0], you may use it for free like a like a reciprocity license
• if you are using the software to build any non-libre software, are for-profit, are not a "contributor"[0], you must share a percentage of your revenue like a reciprocity license

[0] i define "contributors" as the project members. to become a contributor, it's not enough to get a pull request merged (in services like tip4commit we see people trying to push many minor pull requests so they can get tips), you need to provide continued quality contributions and have a decision in favor from existing contributors. currently, i think this sort of arrangement needs a contributor agreement to work properly, so contributions are assigned to the project members and each member agrees to the project's group process while joining.

The main problem with PPL type of licenses is that they introduce criteria based on the social structures people participate in.

But we are in a period of transition and we are building tools that will create new forms of social structures.

Unless we reach to a point where we know what those structures will be, how can we create a license based on them?

So it would be better for now to simply use (A/L)GPL.

@ahdinosaur - I like where you are going with your outline above. We have thought about how to use something like value network - contribution economy rules for our software project if we ever get enough contributors to make it work.

We figured git commits are economic events, but the value of work would be set by group ratings for issues. In other words, you don't get credit for each commit, you get credit for the issue you resolved. And then all of the proposed work of all kinds goes into the issues list, and gets value-rated.

@apostolisxekoukoul - these kinds of discussions and experiments are actually part of the transition. They are (at least for me) not really legal questions, they are questions about how we want to relate about work and livelihoods. Hope that is clear enuf?

@bobhaugen I am not against discussing about the licences, but the discussion should be done from a technical point of view.

How will our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure transform the productive social structures?

We need to specify this first and then start talking about licenses. Since the above question is a difficult one, I would advice to be cautious at making conclusions.

@xekoukou so what is your opinion on how our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure will transform the productive social structures?

to me, i see holons as the fundamental unit of social structure, so i see our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure as a means to support that structure.

Related via @dominictarr
https://feedopensource.com/
http://dominictarr.com/post/71958587606/some-thoughts-on-the-economics-of-software-development

@simontegg - https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/co-op - from the comments on feedopensource - is also interesting.

(By "interesting", I mean as a datapoint in a graph of related ideas about how to fund open software.)

@ahdinosaur
I want our infrastructure to allow
1) users to determine what is to be produced.
2)users to directly invest their money to projects themselves (not banks).

3)producers/workers to peer produce meaning that
a)there is coordination for the work that needs to be done,
b)there is a method of accounting of the work done,
c)workers have equal power and control at whichever place they work and thus equal earnings.
4)peer production to be dynamic, to change easily as needs change.
5)for a global coordination of the economy(across the chains of productions and taking into account the global needs of a society).

Social (sub)structures of society will emerge so as to reduce complexity (information overhead).

I don't know much about holons to have an opinion but from what I read, it is similar to what I say.

@ahdinosaur
I want our infrastructure to allow
1) users to determine what is to be produced.
2)users to directly invest their money to projects themselves (not banks).

3)producers/workers to peer produce meaning that
a)there is coordination for the work that needs to be done,
b)there is a method of accounting of the work done,
c)workers have equal power and control at whichever place they work and thus equal earnings.
4)peer production to be dynamic, to change easily as needs change.
5)for a global coordination of the economy(across the chains of productions and taking into account the global needs of a society).

Social (sub)structures of society will emerge so as to reduce complexity (information overhead).

I don't know much about holons to have an opinion but from what I read, it is similar to what I say.

Silke Helfrich wrote about a "Commons Creating Peer Production" Licence that evolves exactly out of the idea of reproducing the Commons instead of only using them.

@jonrichter - good article, altho I am reading it via google translate...a Guerrilla Translator version would be much better. And I like the name and idea. I did not see the license in that article, though - did I miss something?

She mentions it in footnote seven. Tweet her at @commonify to request a translation ;)

See also https://plus.google.com/u/0/116589201391591303703/posts/gqHwvbtdeSa

@lynnfoster - that (above) is a link to the conversation I was talking about.

@ahdinosaur what you describe is EXACTLY what we're working to achieve through CM.

the best I can do in figuring it all out is as you can read on the site. well. almost! recently approached by the strategic innovations team at http://www.suncorp.com.au/, AMAZING conversation last Sunday via Skype.

They contacted me following seeing the hangout I did 'The Great Currency Debate' on Michel Bauwens site. They liked how collaborative CM is / encompasses so many aspects of 'new ways of doing things' and want to help fund the continuance of both this debate, the currency exchange and the development of CM at large. They have proposed a sponsorship idea. They are fine with us getting additional sponsorship. This is the start of something big.

We're going to use the hangouts to determine how we'll do things on CM. Where do revenues go etc.

@joshuavial hey Joshia. Reason I mention you here is because during the call with Suncorp, I talked about Loomio and how we intend to use this and Cobudget. The guy who led the conversation (Tim O'Brien) was familiar (as he was with Qoin as well - our currency partner / the team we're sighted to build the exchange). He commented that they may well be able to help fund CM / Loomio needs.

I'll hear more late October/early November.

I've also developed a sponsorship proposal based on above. Intro attached.

Assoc Links:
http://thecitizensmedia.com/
http://bit.ly/YzNiuJ

The Great Currency Debate:

Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbOyjaGS7SM

Main: http://youtu.be/SQ0_2mFU_RI

https://plus.google.com/u/0/116589201391591303703/posts/gqHwvbtdeSa
@simontegg @joshuavial @ahdinosaur (or anybody else) - what should I say to Michel's question? I can roll my own, but help would make it better. Or one of you could write it. Or we could each write our own.

One reason for not responding immediately myself is that I don't know how many people share my view of an Open Apps Ecosystem, or if I misinterpreted Enspiral's idea.

To explain: I'm spinning off @simontegg 's idea in the recent OpenApps update: "We’re thinking of licensing things in a Peer-production license and stir up these developers and get them thinking about alternative economic models that support open-source developers directly (rather than just working for big corporate and doing open-source on the side). "

So what that could mean is something like microservice architecture plus open value network income distribution.

Sorta like inverse Conway's Law. Conway's Law says "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." Which means, inversely, that if you want a distributed P2P software organization, you should use a microservices architecture.

Now, I don't know how many people here would agree with both clauses of that statement (microservices plus OVN rules). And really, we don't know how the microservice architecture will work in a distributed P2P network either. (We (mikorizal.org) currently have a monolothic architecture, so we don't have much advice to offer, but we still think Open Apps could be transformative and want to follow your lead. And if we succeed in participating, we will follow OVN rules ourselves.)

So another hesitation is how much to say to the world now...or what is premature. (Michel has a pretty big audience.)

Anyway, that's some of my thoughts. What do you think?

Thanks for prompting this @bobhaugen. I broadly agree I'm putting some more complete thoughts down and I'll update here soon.

@joshuavial @alanna @benjaminknight @richarddbartlett @craigambrose @craigtaubeschock @jonlemmon @nanz1

How do some quiet folks feel?

I don't think Michel is coming from "wants to learn more", although he may want to do that. I told him I thought the Open Apps Ecosystem could be transformational. He wanted to know why I thought so, and if he agreed, he would write it up (or you collectively could write it up) on the P2P Foundation website. Enspiral is already out there, several times: https://www.google.com/#q=enspiral+p2pfoundation

I asked here if people wanted to do that, and what to say, and Jon proposed a process to do so.

The message to Michel could be "we do not have a coordinated vision to be spread into the world". Ok with me.

I think we certainly have some notions and values, but clearly there's work needed to be done to make that into a cohesive vision. We could certainly err on the side of not thinking about that enough, but at the moment it seems like we're in danger of focusing a bit too much on the abstract and not enough on the practical. I'm personally not terribly interested in overall vision and roadmap until we have a small working piece of software to talk about.

@craigambrose couldn't agree more.

+1 to @craigambrose

To clarify, if you're a developer working on a potential ecosystem app and you have limited time, you may (as I do) want to spend more time pushing code than doing comms.

If you've got more energy for comms or ideation then I don't want to discourage you from using this group to explore ideas or speaking to others about those ideas.
It'll currently be difficult to reach an 'official openapp position' given the above, but that does not exclude low-key comms with Michel about what's going on.

For me this poll wasn't about actually deciding a consensus position. I just wanted to test how Loomio's actual benifit could help this discussion. Surprisingly, the differen positions appear more clear to me now.

I also especially liked @derekrazo's argument about low bandwith people that cannot commit too much into communications, as they prefer building. Thanks for the Enspiral App Ecosystem link.

But if Open App is just a brand, of say a bunch of developers, it's not more than the actual idea of Linked Data itself. Or would it tend towards processual interfaces and self-building UIs? What's the matter to give it a new name? Or equals the Open App Ecosystem already the Enspiral App Ecosystem? Just asking.

Which also kind of reminds me of Poplus.

Thanks for the mention @carolinesmalley might be an introduction for @derekrazo and @benjaminknight

How about if I say to Michel, "The sense of the group is that they would like to get more actual apps up and running before they do more outreach"? In other words, later for that?

(By the way, I totally respect that opinion. I code every day, and garden and build stuff on our homestead, and work with several networks, so I can understand wanting to keep your head down and being modest about claims to grandeur...)

i fully support the approach to "under-promise and over-deliver" by letting our software speak for itself. i agreed because i was excited about an excuse for people here to communicate together about their common ground.

bouncing off what's been said, i think instead of communication focused on outreach, we need more communication focused on development deliverables. my strategy for this has been to assemble ad-hoc working groups based on common development goals. as the ad-hoc dust settles, it might be a good idea to formalize into public working groups with charters that specify targeted development actionables, but really i'm keen for whatever strategy gets more people to work together on shared value.

to this end, i'm really happy with the meetups coming from https://www.loomio.org/d/dRxfgGNQ?page=1#comment-239446. :)

@ahdinosaur - "i agreed because i was excited about an excuse for developers to communicate together about their common ground."

Open Apps Ecosystem has attracted and inspired a bunch of people, including us, who are not part of Enspiral. So we may be annoying to those who are trying to get the Enspiral work done. I commiserate.

But still, you might wonder, why were all of those people inspired?

what about if we had a hangout (could be public or private) where we each share our own answer to the question: what is so important about an open app ecosystem? we don't need to all agree on a single answer, in the same way that we don't all agree on a single software solution. the beauty of the ecosystem is where we intersect. :)

i understand such a hangout is not writing practical software, but since most of us are already doing that anyways, i reckon more cross-pollination amongst the various people and groups here is beneficial.

Just a note to highlight that the usual dichotomy between planners and doers is shaping up nicely on this thread with the doers seeming to have an advantage in this developer heavy group. Understand that building an ecosystem can be done bottom up and perhaps in the early stages it should be, however I am a proponent of working bottom up, top down and middle out all at once so that we do not need to wait for evolutionary time to get shit done. Devs value their freedom and the lack of distraction but are generally not oriented toward the big picture (except the big picture in their own minds, which is in a small container). This is not a bad thing as we do need working code and that is how it is made, by ignoring things, not by paying attention to conflicting and fuzzy requirements. The key question is who is your audience, and how are you enabled. Getting code working only motivates developers. When I see this kind of talk I yawn and resolve to come back later and see if you’ve accidentally built something useful. Just poking the bear folks.

Thanks @kurtlaitner. Could you have a stab at answering your question?

@jonrichter to answer your question upthread. We were thinking of having different opt-in levels of particpation. Some projects could participate by just putting out a json-ld API using the same vocab that we would agree to and develop here. That would be enough to make them broadly interoperable.

Other projects could use openappjs microservices, and ui components. (other teams may wish develop these as well.). This supports use-case like being able to maintain the same group between different apps without having to manually update them. This diagram is a little out of date but outlines how the two of these work together.

P2P policies will facilitate process. build and policy will needs to go hand in hand. I'm not tech. My work is about uniting know how with projects on the ground.

thought to share decision comments with Michel so he can see what's going on. agree with @joshuavial. is too early for me to be involved as well. just too much happening. i'd like to see the build happen in sync with conversations. needs to be as open and collaborative as possible. unite in this and we'll get the investment in needed to make it fly.

@simontegg - Rereading my post I think you mean who is your audience and what you are trying to enable - these are questions individuals in this group must answer for their own projects and this group must answer regarding the reason to have an open apps project - I am suggesting answering those questions may illuminate the contextual question around reaching out to Michel. I am only an observer and have no right to a vote in this regard.

By the way, Michel started a page about Open Apps:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Enspiral_Open_App_Ecosystem

Linked to the doc suggested above-thread.

Not prompted by any more cues from me, by the way.

thanks Bob! perfect. he's such a wonderful wonderful man.

More interesting is the page http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_App_Ecosystem as it redirects directly to the Enspiral Open App Ecosystem, so the question of governance is already raised and answered in the same time?

Everything that happens here is nice to see, in reaction to internal and external views.

The other thing I like about that is that it suggests the potential of a global Open App Ecosystem, while referencing and crediting the Enspiral inspiration.

just a note that I've created a group 'economics' and shifted this discussion here as I anticipate more discussion on this topic. Ping me if this doesn't work for you.

I think we should keep in mind that undermining proprietary resources is in the interest of the commons — and strong copyleft licenses are as good as we can get for that purpose.

If some software is AGPL, for example, and lots of corporations use it without contributing back, it still makes the corporations dependent on this resource. Note that AGPL blocks them from modifying the software without contributing back unless they do so purely privately/internally. The software can still focus on serving the interests of the commons and the dependent corporations cannot do anything about it.

If AGPL software is good enough, it can put proprietary competing software out of business. And that's a good thing. Think of it like this: the more capitalist corporations use LibreOffice, the more it hurts Microsoft Office, and that's a good thing for the commons. The primary reason the commons struggles is because of people choosing proprietary alternatives.

It's not a problem that Wikipedia may provide useful information to capitalists (or even that they can print out Wikipedia articles and sell them). The best part about Wikipedia is that it thwarts attempts to capitalize on public knowledge. We can all hope that Quora fails and goes out of business or becomes fully free/libre/open.

When the commons-option wins (as in Wikipedia), it can grow to the point that it gets enough support. Wikimedia is financially stable just from donations. It's more important that we kill any proprietary competition to Wikipedia than that we get more money for Wikipedia. The copyleft CC-BY-SA license is doing just fine for Wikipedia.

So, here's the deal: by far the MAIN impact of a CBRL on such things as text, photos, and related media will be that it becomes a no-Wikipedia license. A CBRL will have negligible effect on capitalists, will not likely provide substantial income to the commons, and almost everyone it will affect will be all of us who wanted to build something FOR the commons using both Wikimedia resources and these other resources, and the license-incompatibility will make it illegal. In other words, I think the most likely affect of CBRL is to directly hurt the commons and have no other impact.

To be clear, the NC clause in Creative Commons does exactly this harm. Thus, CBRL will not be WORSE that the NC licenses (EDIT: it will be worse in practice because of even further incompatibility, being that CBRL will be incompatible with both copyleft licenses used by GPL software and by Wikimedia and others and also incompatible with existing NC material), but CBRL only attempts to fix the problem of lacking clarity about what-is-commercial and fails to address the arguably primary problem with NC: incompatibility.

@wolftune - a very interesting argument, do you have any longer form documentation supporting it; I would be very interested in reviewing - especially last two paragraphs

@kurtlaitner The complete reference with additional links at the bottom (all well worth reading if you really want to explore this): http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC

And my own summary is designed to be not quite so long and thorough but carefully expressed: why Snowdrift.coop will exclude NC-licensed material: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/whyfree#nc

thanks @wolftune - will review

This conversation needs to be 100% open i.e. need to happen in a way everyone's voice can be heard. This is precisely what we're working to achieve through Citizens Media. Starts with a conversation supported through sponsorship funds. Ecosystem developed in response to conclusion of the commons. Will be able to share more in next 2 weeks. Our start up sponsorship soon to be confirmed.

Yet another solidarity license into the mix:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Copysol_License

Says "applicable to software". I have not studied it in detail, IANAL, etc. Will study in good time.

I just found out that a Benjamin Brownell in the Metamaps.cc Google + Group has our TransforMap licensing thread on his radar. Appearantly Ishan is in contact with you guys; should we point them here again?

I have been following along with this conversation and the Transformap licensing thread - just emerging from the new release of Metamaps. I'd like to evolve the map I've been making on licensing with some of the points brought up in these two places when I've got a bit of time.

@ishanshapiro Could you quickly drop a link to that map, please?

Software licenses - http://metamaps.cc/maps/32

This map is Commons, so anyone can edit and add to it :-)

Ouh, do we have a similiar thing for data licences, too, yet? If not TransforMap is here to help! ;)

The original Peer Production License (as written about/ included here http://media.telekommunisten.net/manifesto.pdf ) was specifically for non-digital goods - for things like arts and crafts and the idea was that only worker co-ops would be able to freely re-use. It has its own problems, but is at least internally coherent.

The CBRL has never made any sense to me. The idea sounds nice, but the problem(s) it is trying to solve (e.g. the capture of user-created value by owners of proprietary corporate platforms) really have nothing to do with licences and everything to do with organisational structures and ownership. The "licence" that solves the problem is well established: it's called the rules of a (multi-stakeholder) co-op.

My two favourite sets of rules for co-ops in the UK are these (I'm cheating a bit because both come in lots of different versions):

Somerset Rules:
http://www.somerset.coop/p/somerset-rules-registrations.html

Fairshares:
http://www.fairshares-association.com/wiki/index.php?title=FairShares_Brand

Lots of resources related to multi-stakeholder co-ops here:
http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Cooperatives/Multi-Stakeholder_Co-ops/

@josefdaviescoates - I like multi-stakeholder co-ops, and also worker co-ops, but I am also interested in the reciprocity licenses. I do agree that the organizational structures and ownership are primary.

But legal cooperatives are a bit difficult to form internationally, and can be a lot of unnecessary ceremony locally as well.

And they are not immune to takeover by self-interest (I've seen it happen, more than once).

Thus I remain interested in lots of experiments at this stage of the game.

@bobhaugen Sure, and that is the answer Michel and other supporters say in response to any criticism: "it's an experiment worth trying". I'm utterly unconvinced myself, but remain totally open to being proven completely wrong :)

Take for example a couple of the core ideas/ impetuses:

1. only people who contribute to the commons get to use the commons.

2. big corporate platforms capture the value their users create. No fair.

OK, but, um, the big corporate proprietary platforms do contribute to the commons (e.g. https://code.facebook.com/projects/ and https://developers.google.com/open-source/ ) and so they would still be able to use the commons, no?

See also @wolftune's points :)

Personally I think the whole licence thing is a bit pointless really because it is so unenforceable anyway. I mean, who here can honestly say they don't routinely violate copyright? and what are the consequences? Mostly inconsequential. I like public domain :) (although I can see plenty of good reason why in many situations that isn't the best option - e.g. I'm doing a bit of work with http://lowimpact.org taking over their publishing stuff and I have plans to make them a radically forward thinking publisher who routinely give away CC licensed ebooks (whilst simultaneously selling ebook and print on demand books). I already know for sure that the authors wouldn't go with Public Domain and the best I'm likely to get is CC-NC-BY (even though I agree with @wolftune's views about NC) )

Hi @josefdaviescoates - I hope I am not using "experiment worth trying" as a response to criticism. And I did read all of @wolftune 's points. I don't think anybody has much clear evidence that they have the next step forward, including him. Before you ask, I don't think value networks do either. Read the Sensorica crisis summary if you think I do.

I agree that none of the licenses are practically enforceable, they are at best statements of solidarity and can constrain behavior among people who care about their reputations. Which is not useless.

The reciprocity license that interests me is more along the lines of "follow value network rules" or "follow cooperative rules" than "contribute to open source software".

But I don't have any evidence that that will do any good either.

I sorta liked @simontegg 's comment, something like, let's reciprocate in real life and let the formalities follow. Hope that works for you.

To explain a hair more: we're interested (among other things, but in the context of this discussion) in economic networks that circulate resources inside the network as much as possible, using whatever combination of tweaks will get those circles to happen. We think this is related to all of those other strength-of-network "laws". And in this context, want to apply that thinking to software ecosystems. Reciprocation is a key tweak.

I'm reminded of Andrius Kulikauskas's idea about "Ethical Public Domain" which I remember as basically being something along the lines of "you can do whatever the hell you like - because we can't really stop you anyway - but of course we prefer and partly expect people to do as we do and be nice and to give credit where credit is due with attribution etc"

But yeah @bobhaugen I also like the goals/ intentions of reciprocity licences etc. But as someone said paraphrasing someone else "culture eats governance for breakfast" (it was Bob Cannell at Suma Wholefoods (the largest most successful worker co-ops in the UK if you discount John Lewis who aren't really a workers co-op in the same sense) https://twitter.com/bobcannell/status/467333999573352448

LOVE that one, @josefdaviescoates!! Couldn't resist a retweet :0)

Scoop (a news organisation in NZ) has become an enspiral venture and apparently uses something like a CBRL for use of its content

@simontegg - how did Scoop become an enspiral venture? (That's interesting in itself, as an example of software ecosystem evolution.)

They went through the process described at https://github.com/enspiral/agreements/blob/master/agreements/ventures.md#becoming-an-enspiral-venture ( https://github.com/enspiral/agreements/blob/master/agreements/ventures.md#becoming-an-enspiral-venture )

@joshuavial - thanks.

@simontegg sounds like Scoop license is just like a creative commons by-nc and not really a CBRL-type license, part of the point of which is to specifically to allow for commercial use by people who also contribute to the same commons.