Last year I began having conversations with Utah public school educators about sharing their educational materials as open educational resources. The conversation generally went like this: Me: Would you be willing to share the lesson plans and other materials you create with others for them to reuse? Teacher: Sure! Me: Great! The best way to do that is by applying this Creative Commons license to your work. Teacher: A copyright license? ...
The OER Handbook is currently featured on the homepage of the Creative Commons site (you can also access the OER Handbook story directly via the CC blog). Kudos to everyone involved!
As reported on Ars Technica, a recent United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision has given some legal teeth to open licenses: The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. ...
Head straight to the transcript of Jimmy’s announcement, which also includes video. Also read the official Mediawiki Foundation resolution. From the transcript of Jimmy’s announcement: “We’re going to change the GFDL in such a way that Wikipedia will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.” So they’re changing the GFDL itself. Perhaps this will mean universal compatability between GFDL and CC-By-SA? Wow. I’m all but speechless.
I love Stephen Downes. Even though I can’t understand what he’s been saying to me for the last year, he still pushes me around mentally and makes me think and write. You simply have to love someone who does that for you. Commenting on Jennifer’s blog, Stephen asks: ...