[LTER-im] RFC on licensing the LTER Controlled Vocabulary

[Wade Sheldon]

Hi Eda,

Glad to hear from you!

I'll let John address your question too, but the primary goal is to provide formal guidance to adopters of what rights they have to use the vocabulary. In the case of CC0, that communicates that the vocabulary is public domain and they are free to use it for whatever purpose without restriction and without the requirement to credit the source. Of course attribution is always encouraged in an academic setting.

If a more restrictive license were chosen, like CC-BY (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/) then users would be required to include formal attribution in any products. However, that would not be practical to enforce legally, and John made the point that the words were drawn from so many sources and already remixed so much, without formal licensing from the sources, that proper attribution would be awkward at best and impossible at worst.

So in my opinion the main implication is that by formally attaching a license, particularly CC0, we would be encouraging broadest use of the vocabulary by providing clarity to end-users.

Wade




On 11/1/2017 8:35 PM, Eda C. Melendez-Colom wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  To decide if this is a good decision I need to know what are the implications of licencing.
>
> EDA
>
> Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/mobile/?.src=Android>
>
>     On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Wade Sheldon
>     <sheldon at uga.edu> wrote:
>     Hi everyone,
>
>     The IMC Controlled Vocabulary working group, led by John Porter, has received a variety of requests from other groups seeking to leverage the LTER vocabulary. Past inquiries have included included EnvThes (http://www.enveurope.eu/news/envthes-environmental-thesaurus), a European thesaurus that imported it wholesale, then added to it, NEON (via Christine Laney) and WHOI (via Janet Fredricks). Most recently, the Content Enrichment team at Wiley (a commercial publisher) has asked for permission to use the vocabulary and brought up the notion of licensing.
>
>     John has sought input from IM-Exec on how to license the vocabulary for use outside LTER. He is recommending we formally release the vocabulary under a CC0 (public domain) license. The keywords were drawn from so many sources that attribution would be problematic, and a CC0 license would support broadest use.
>
>     As you may recall the vocabulary was initially assembled by mining keywords used in LTER site metadata and then refined and augmented with input from working group members and other interested IMs. Because LTER sites all contributed to this effort, IM-Exec would like to give the IMC an opportunity to comment on this issue. Please reply to this email or contact me directly if you have an opinion you'd like to voice on what licensing is appropriate. I will collect feedback until the Nov 13 IMC VWC and then collate the results.
>
>     Thanks.
>
>     Wade Sheldon
>     GCE-LTER
>
>     -- 
>     ____________________________________
>
>       Wade M. Sheldon
>       GCE-LTER Information Manager
>       School of Marine Programs
>       University of Georgia
>       Athens, GA 30602-3636
>       Email: sheldon at uga.edu <mailto:sheldon at uga.edu>
>       WWW: http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/bios/wsheldon
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Long Term Ecological Research Network
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>

-- 
____________________________________

  Wade M. Sheldon
  GCE-LTER Information Manager
  School of Marine Programs
  University of Georgia
  Athens, GA 30602-3636
  Email: sheldon at uga.edu
  WWW: http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/bios/wsheldon