In two recent posts on OpenBusiness.cc, (What is an Open Business and What is an Open Business – Part II), a number of thought-provoking ideas have been voiced with regard to the conditions that shape openness in business. In a similar vain, J. Nolen…..

At this present time, when it comes to the thought of open business, the aspect I am concerned with is the creation of copyleft works.

There are other aspects discussed in the thread above which do concern me, but I am not focused on them at present.

That being the case, I doubt I am going to buy into any definition of Open Business (you see, I lean to the Free Software versus the Open Source Side of things) that does not hold to the equivalent of GPL or BSD or CC BY-SA or CC BY licenses where that can be done. (Similar ideas wrt patents if they apply.)

So, what I offered was not a critism so much as what I see as a statement of fact. I have been aware of being in this game for a good number of years now and I really don’t think that you are going to find a way to please everyone. If that is the case, perhaps the thing to do is to try and figure out what openbusiness (as a site and as a group of interested persons) thinks is best for culture and access to knowledge (to use your terms from above) and to try and come up with a decent definition from there. Some will buy into it and some will not.

Certainly, creators have the legal right to put their works under any level of “protection” offered by law the various licenses including home grown ones, but those of us looking for something better than effectively never expiring all rights reserved works do not have to applaud and work to support choices which are way to far from optimal in the areas we value.

So, I came to this site as a result of my interest in finding effective ways of funding the creation of copyleft works of all types. I see that people are discussing other aspects of business practices that I also have interest in and that is a good thing, but I am trying to concentrate on the reason I came here.

I am happy to discuss further. (I wish this site had better discussion forums. Hint, hint to the pertinent parties.)

all the best,

drew

Good point, an inclusive definition could indeed make OB acceptable to no one at all, which is clearly not a desirable outcome.

To clarify my intention further, it may be rash to reject business practices without proof of the harm which they cause to a given culture. This is something I’ve certainly been guilty of in the past. Instead it is advisable to understand and appropriate any commercial practices which might present opportunities and benefits for creative folks. For example, advertising may well blight our landscape and promote weak products, but if the revenue created by an advert enables a group to practice their creativity, then that advertising might on balance be a positive thing. To be sure, commercial practices of no benefit or in fact detrimental to culture and access to knowledge should be excluded from the dimensions of open business.

Perhaps it was my characterisation of proprietary approaches to copyright as being not necessarily outside OB which prompted your criticism. If so, lets discuss that point more directly. For me, its about personal choice – a copyright work should be protected to the level desired by its creator, whether that means reserving all or some or none of the rights offered by statute. That said, creative workers are in general ill-informed of issues relevant to an informed choice regarding the appropriate level of copyright protection, most likely a result of your average artist having little interest in legal, economic or ICT theory.

I hope we can discuss further.