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(design-and-planning-2013-information-liberation)=

# Information Liberation

:::{note}

This document is part of brain storming the project of cihai. It's for historic purposes only.

:::

_Written Late 2013_

Datasets should be available under the most permissive License possible. So long as they provide
attribution to the person's / official institution creating it.

Cihai believes in permissive license (Do as you like, for fun, academic, profit-making) but
attribute.

Common concerns over people over their datasets are:

- What if someone uses my dataset for profit purposes?
- What if someone doesn't give attribution to my / my colleagues / my institution / my effort?
- What if someone doesn't contribute modifications to my / my colleagues / my institution / my
  effort?

If you have not participated in an open source software effort, you would be surprised how people
are happy to contribute to a common effort. Efforts like GNU/Linux are world-wide collaborations
bringing together a rock-solid OS powering supercomputers, the internet.

## Permissive-licensing your dataset

Even if have brought into consideration the fruits of an open source software effort you should know
some of them are built upon restrictive, viral licenses which are commercially-unfriendly,
complicated and require borrowing _their_ code should mean any non-GPL compatible effort - private
_or_ freely available permissive, can't use it without turning the software into GPL too! But GPL
licensed software can use permissive software in their efforts! It opened my mind after years of
thinking GPL was all principle and virtue! Defend the weak! Protect the innocent!

_Freedom._

To add to the confusion, this is referred to by some people as "Free" software. In reality, it's
providing open source, but inhibits the real world realities of a value-added, passionate and
expressive society, where people want it to be their choice whether they distribute their changes.

If you ever built something special and felt your hardwork deserved to be placed into the market to
see how people receive it's value, you would understand. But others may find this selfish!

If you not seen a permissively-licensed software project, you would be surprised to see, people are
contributing these projects despite _there is no fine print requiring them to_.

Look into your roots, if you at your core want to open a useful work to the world - why hinder it
with a minefield a caveats?

The success of open source efforts isn't a product of rules, but a result of fast computers, fast
internet, convenient developer tools, brain power, and a community of self-interested / passionate
individuals who put in the hours and had the descipline to learn programming who had the courage and
desire to help.

### Case study: IPython

This is an observation and doesn't infer endorsement by IPython or its contributors.

There is no requirement for providing an open source derivative (or an upstream patch) for a
modification, so does IPython development go stale? [93 pages of patches]
committed to the project.

There is no requirement restricting large corporations from using them and giving nothing back,
[Microsoft donated $100K to IPython].

Perhaps academic institutions will snub them for using a permissive license? The core developers are
academics.

Perhaps non-profits will snub them for not using a permissive license? [IPython gets a $1.15M sloan
foundation grant].

[93 pages of patches]: https://github.com/ipython/ipython/pulls?direction=desc&page=1&sort=created&state=closed
[ipython gets a $1.15m sloan foundation grant]: http://ipython.org/sloan-grant.html
[microsoft donated $100k to ipython]: http://ipython.org/microsoft-donation-2013.html

## Conclusion

A collaborative open source effort is passionate and self-interested parties coming together to be
constructive.

Laozi, 老子, pioneered the concept of Wu wei (無爲), we do without doing. In a totally uncontrived
way, without requirement, people from around the world crossed political, language and geographical
barriers to bring together a common creation. It furthers one to see that.

Whether you are a copyleft, academic, private or none of the above. Providing your data under a
permissive license will open your work to the world.

- [Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By)
  v1.0]
- [MIT License]

[mit license]: _http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
[open data commons attribution license (odc-by) v1.0]: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0