xbiblio-devel Digest, Vol 34, Issue 14

CSL Development
1

Requiring attribution is an unneeded PITA and
actually against what I think many of us believe rather strongly: that
the content of a citation style is not subject to copyright claims.

Attribution during redistribution seems somewhat important to me: I
wouldn’t want an app to distribute CSL files after ripping out the
author/contributor information.

Attribution for derivative works may get “tricky,” but note that the
attribution clause of CC states “provide, reasonable to the medium or
means You are utilizing.” Within a CSL file, I would think this would
mean doing something like using the template link to point to the
style you borrowed from and/or keeping contributors intact. Neither
seems to be a real PITA.

I also don’t see why an attribution clause is any more counter to the
notion that style files aren’t copyrightable than applying ANY license
to those files in the first place.

So for sake of argument, why not just say that all CSL styles are
licensed under …

I agree with Frank’s concerns and think it is important to say where a
default license would be applied: by the schema, by a style generator,
or by a hosted repository of styles.

I am opposed to the schema assigning a “default” license. If style
files are copyrightable in the first place, the creator of a style
should be able to dictate whether or not he applies a license and/or
the terms of that license.

It’d seem slightly more acceptable if style-generating tools
inserted a particular license (because you could choose to use some
other tool or modify the generated style), but even this would seem
somewhat obnoxious to me.

If style repositories wanted to mandate or encourage particular
licenses, that would seem fine. It’d be nice if the Zotero-hosted
repository actually did this. For the Zotero repository, I agree with
Simon that a copyleft license makes sense. If we want CSL adoption in
proprietary apps (and I think we do), the GPL is out. I guess LGPL
would be in, but it seems weird to license these files like source
code & it just seems pragmatic to use something like CC-SA.

Licensing at the hosting level is what is done for most other file
formats: Wikipedia and sourceforge make you license your content in a
particular way if you want it to be hosted by them. But our word
processors and IDEs (and even MediaWiki) don’t apply a license on our
behalf. While there are probably file formats that require a
particular license, I know of none that are popular.

[But I also believe this isn’t “all or nothing” and that “some is
better than none.” I’d love to see Thomson-Reuters adopt CSL in
Endnote, even if they “locked up” the style files they distributed.]

So maybe we just add a required:

rights-uri = element cs:right-uri { licences }

I’m a fan of having lightweight files & don’t know if we should make
this mandatory (especially if we don’t think the content warrants
copyright!).

Also, why not either:

or: info-rights = element cs:rights { attribute uri { xsd:anyURI }?, attribute label { text }? }

–Rick

2

Requiring attribution is an unneeded PITA and
actually against what I think many of us believe rather strongly: that
the content of a citation style is not subject to copyright claims.

Attribution during redistribution seems somewhat important to me: I
wouldn’t want an app to distribute CSL files after ripping out the
author/contributor information.

Attribution for derivative works may get “tricky,” but note that the
attribution clause of CC states “provide, reasonable to the medium or
means You are utilizing.” Within a CSL file, I would think this would
mean doing something like using the template link to point to the
style you borrowed from and/or keeping contributors intact. Neither
seems to be a real PITA.

Some of the issues I’m raising here relate to the MakeCSL idea, where
the idea is you to create a style by pulling in pre-defined macros.
One way to solve this issue is to just have a single, master, CSL
style with these macros, and very clear licensing terms that enable
what I’m looking for here. In the case, I’d imagine a “created with
MakeCSL …” statement on the finished styles that includes some
terms, but am not sure.

I also don’t see why an attribution clause is any more counter to the
notion that style files aren’t copyrightable than applying ANY license
to those files in the first place.

INAL, so am happy if we could get some guidance from someone that is.
It might be enough if we could just agree on what we’d like to
achieve. For me, it is that CSL styles can be, and remain, freely
distributable usable and remixable.

So for sake of argument, why not just say that all CSL styles are
licensed under …

I agree with Frank’s concerns and think it is important to say where a
default license would be applied: by the schema, by a style generator,
or by a hosted repository of styles.

I am opposed to the schema assigning a “default” license. If style
files are copyrightable in the first place, the creator of a style
should be able to dictate whether or not he applies a license and/or
the terms of that license.

But are they copyrightable? I don’t think so. I often don’t put my
name on style mods, b/c I think it’s donkey work.

It’d seem slightly more acceptable if style-generating tools
inserted a particular license (because you could choose to use some
other tool or modify the generated style), but even this would seem
somewhat obnoxious to me.

If style repositories wanted to mandate or encourage particular
licenses, that would seem fine. It’d be nice if the Zotero-hosted
repository actually did this. For the Zotero repository, I agree with
Simon that a copyleft license makes sense. If we want CSL adoption in
proprietary apps (and I think we do), the GPL is out. I guess LGPL
would be in, but it seems weird to license these files like source
code & it just seems pragmatic to use something like CC-SA.

Licensing at the hosting level is what is done for most other file
formats: Wikipedia and sourceforge make you license your content in a
particular way if you want it to be hosted by them. But our word
processors and IDEs (and even MediaWiki) don’t apply a license on our
behalf. While there are probably file formats that require a
particular license, I know of none that are popular.

[But I also believe this isn’t “all or nothing” and that “some is
better than none.” I’d love to see Thomson-Reuters adopt CSL in
Endnote, even if they “locked up” the style files they distributed.]

So maybe we just add a required:

rights-uri = element cs:right-uri { licences }

I’m a fan of having lightweight files & don’t know if we should make
this mandatory (especially if we don’t think the content warrants
copyright!).

Also, why not either:

or: info-rights = element cs:rights { attribute uri { xsd:anyURI }?, attribute label { text }? }

That might be work.

Bruce