Will Biostar Adopt A Freedom Granting License For Its Content?

Question

[Aleksandr Levchuk]

After reading about Stack Exchange 2.0 one can conclude that BioStar is part of Stack Exchange 1.0 thus "being owned by individuals or businesses".

There is a recent (1 month) question asking Who owns BioStar? and an answer from Dr. István Albert. I understand that under Stack Exchange 2.0 the hosting company could start running Ads. I am greatly against Ads. Advertisement degrades culture and environment all over the world but the lack of freedom is much worse. BioStar unlike Wikipedia does not have a clear license model. The content of Wikipedia is clearly licensed - the content is publicly owned (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License) unless it's a logo of NASA or something of that sort.

If BioStar website ceases to exist, it's users and it's content may be lost. At this moment there is no clear right to clone the content. Also the right to Re-mix the content must be there.

The Stack Exchange 2.0 websites get their content licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License with Sharing and Re-mixing allowed (for an example please see http://photo.stackexchange.com).

Stack Exchange 2.0 could be a great solution because the content gets covered by a freedom granting license (same license as Wikipedia) - inevitably putting more pressure on the Stack Exchange people to provide high quality service and stability.

Will BioStar migrate to a system where the content is community owned?

Edit: Great news!!! BioStar content is now licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It's a freedom granting license.

[Bio_X2Y]

I would encourage the moderators to leave this open. I think this kind of question are of central importance to people who must make a kind of subjective decision as to how much time/effort to invest in the community. Could it all disappear overnight? etc.

[Simon Cockell]

I'm of a mind to close this. Discussions about the site itself really should be confined to the google group.

[Simon Cockell]

I would argue that this is precisely the kind of discussion the google group is for. I will leave it open for now, but if the question is here for discussion, I'm making it wiki.

[Egon Willighagen]

BioStar could also opt to move to a fee platform, like Shapado. We have been using the for 'cheminformatics' for a while now, and I am fairly happy with it: http://blueobelisk.shapado.com/

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

For me StackExchange 2.0 is not a viable alternative as long as they don't spell out unambiguously how they wish to monetize it. SE2 is currently funded by venture capitalist and that most likely implies a priority towards profits.

As for the licensing of the content I am very much supporting the concept but there must be a way to communicate this to the all contributors to the site, and I think it must be done in a way so that a contributor is able to remove their contributions if they wish so. This is the reason I don't currently distribute the content under any license.

Privacy consideration are often overlooked moreover I would strongly prefer to see a community of identifiable individuals (unlike the weird anonymous personas in Wikipedia). A community composed of real people needs stronger privacy controls, I for one would not want my answers or my real life persona to be associated with a site that decided to use my content and persona but whose goals I do not agree with.

The moment the StackExchange 2.0 was announced StackExchange 1.0 became free. Thus right now there is no cost to run BioStar, the company guarantees to run it at least until Wednesday, April 13, 2011. Well before this time comes around we have to either come up with an alternative service (and this is the option I favor) or migrate to StackExchange 2.0 (an option I don't like due to the reasons above)

[Istvan Albert]

Honestly the implication that anyone would be able to start another Q&A site making use of my answers troubles me. It feels akin to publishing in an open source journal, say PLOS Biology, then having another company start a different open source journal, taking my publication from the PLOS site and claiming that I published in their journal.

[Bio_X2Y]

Perhaps it doesn't matter if StackExchange 2.0 attempt to monetize it with ads, etc. Since the content is licensed under Creative Commons, doesn't that mean we can just copy off all the Q&As and continue elsewhere if we want?

[Aleksandr Levchuk]

Please read the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. I understand that it gives control to the author to specify how the work should be attributed: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ I assume that I you can request: If shared, the work to be clearly labeled as an original publication on BioStar.

[Aleksandr Levchuk]

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License as I understand gives control to the author to specify how the work should be attributed: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5 - one can assume that I you the author can request: If shared, the work to be clearly labeled as an original publication on BioStar.

[Aleksandr Levchuk]

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License as I understand gives control to the author to specify how the work should be attributed: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5 - one can assume that the author can request the work (if shared) to be clearly labeled as an original publication on BioStar.

[Aleksandr Levchuk]

Thank you for making BioStar content free! I now started contributing more and introducing the website to my friends.