Good news, everyone!

The Communia Association [1] has just joined the Observatory with the goal of working on this study. Communia is a European network dedicated to the public domain (which includes free licensing by their definition). Members include Kennisland, Creative Commons and many universities and research institutions. Their manifesto has, among others, been signed by  WMFR, WMIT, WMAR, WMNL, WMCH, WMUK, WMCZ and many board members from other chapters.

This year's plenary during which the study will be partly discussed is next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. I will keep you posted on the discussion.

Cheers,
Dimi

[1]http://www.communia-project.eu/about

2014-09-29 18:37 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa <lvilla@wikimedia.org>:

On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 3:01 AM, L.Gelauff <lgelauff@gmail.com> wrote:

2014-09-27 1:39 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa <lvilla@wikimedia.org>:

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:25 AM, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com> wrote:

2. They really want to know if infringements is a problem for us

The official name of the Observatory being "EU Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights", they seemed really keen on including infringements of PD&OL in the study. I said I could give them a few case studies or examples, but hadn't heard of any studies on this. Should we give in and let them do research on this, although it might take focus off the economic contribution part?

If it helps them act at all, I can't see how it hurts us to have them think about it. It's not the most frustrating mis-framing to come out of Brussels. :)

I was pointed by an acquaintance at these studies that are specific to the use of open source in the Android App Store (a space that is easy to study):

The press releases for the initial study and a follow-up are here:

http://www.openlogic.com/wazi/bid/187975/Research-Mobile-Apps-and-Open-Source-Compliance

http://www.openlogic.com/news/bid/210112/OpenLogic-Code-Scan-Reveals-Increasing-Open-Source-License-Compliance-Among-Mobile-Apps

I also wrote aaa 3-part blog series on the research, results, etc. here: 

http://www.openlogic.com/blog/bid/223525/Apps-App-Store-and-Open-Source-Part-1

http://www.openlogic.com/blog/bid/226481/Apps-App-Stores-and-Open-Source-Part-2

http://www.openlogic.com/blog/bid/230007/Apps-App-Stores-and-Open-Source-Part-3

The headline number is that they found 71% non-compliance in the first study; down to 38% of apps non-compliant in the followup (in 2012).

I think key to this question is the 'problem' part. For Public Domain that is easy: no it is not. At all. For the free licenses, it would require more of an opinion survey than an economical approach. Something very interesting, but perhaps not the kind of study they are best at? It would (in my view) require mostly asking contributors if they are limiting their contributions because of infringements.

Yes, exactly right. Perhaps to be constructive we suggest that there are many different motivations for open contributors, so that any investigation of infringement must be paired with an investigation of:

1. motives for contribution that are not impacted by infringement [there is tons of research in this area, some even by economists]
2. overall trends in contribution [this shouldn't be too hard to get out of, say, github/sourceforge?]

Luis 

--

Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

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