Hello Markus,
First rest assured that any feedback provided will be integrated in
the research project on the topic with proper references, including
this email. It might not come before beginning of next week however,
as I'm already more than fully booked until then. But once again it's
on a wiki, be bold.
Le 01/12/2017 à 01:18, Markus Krötzsch a écrit :
Dear Mathieu,
Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first
chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other
claims here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already
doing this, and I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.
Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his
earlier message (quote included below this email for reference): it
was not Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a
discussion among several people who had worked with open data for
some time before Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this
choice and still do. I have never received any money directly or
indirectly from Google, though -- full disclosure -- I got several
T-shirts for supervising in Summer of Code projects.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that too, but to my mind the problem
is not money but governance. Anyone with too much cash can throw it
wherever wanted, and if some fall into Wikimedia pocket, that's fine.
But the moment a decision that impact so deeply Wikimedia governance
and future happen, then maximum transparency must be present,
communication must be extensive, and taking into account community
feedback is extremely preferable. No one is perfect, myself included,
so its all the more important to listen to external feedback. I said
earlier that I found the knowledge engine was a good idea, but for
what I red it seems that transparency didn't reach expectation of the
community.
So, I was wrong my inferences around Denny, good news. Of course I
would prefer to have other archived sources to confirm that. No
mistrust intended, I think most of us are accustomed to put claims in
perspective with sources and think critically.
For completeness, was this discussion online or – to bring bag the
earlier stated testimony – around a pizza? If possible, could you
provide a list of involved people? Did a single person took the final
decision, or was it a show of hands, or some consensus emerged from
discussion? Or maybe the community was consulted with a vote, and if
yes, where can I find the archive?
Also archives show that lawyers were consulted on the topic, could we
have a copy of their report?
At no time did Google or any other company take
part in our
discussions in the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they?
From what I can see on their web page, Google has no problem with
all kinds of different license terms in the data they display.
Because they are
more and more moving to a business model of
providing themselves what people are looking for to keep users in
their sphere of tracking and influence, probably with the sole idea
of generating more revenue I guess.
Also, I can tell you that we would have reacted
in a very allergic
way to such attempts, so if any company had approached us, this
would quite likely have backfired. But, believe it or not, when we
started it was all but clear that this would become a relevant
project at all, and no major company even cared to lobby us. It was
still mostly a few hackers getting together in varying locations in
Berlin. There was a lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in this
early phase of Wikidata (well, I guess we are still in this phase).
Please situate
that in time so we can place that in a timeline. In
March 2012 Wikimedia DE announced the initial funding of 1.3 million
Euros by Google, Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence
and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past
events that you have not even been close to (calling something
"research" is no substitute for methodology and rigour).
But that's
all the problem here, no one should have to carry the pain
of trying to reconstruct what happened through such a research.
Process of this kind of decision should have been documented and
should be easily be found in archives. If you have suggestion in
methods, please provide them. Just denigrating the work don't help in
any way to improve it. If there are additional sources that I missed,
please provide them. If there are methodologies that would help
improve the work, references are welcome.
Putting unsourced personal attacks against
community members before
all other arguments is a reckless way of maximising effect, and such
rhetoric can damage our movement beyond this thread or topic.
All this is built
on references. If the analyze is wrong, for example
because it missed crucial undocumented information this must be
corrected with additional sources. Wikidata team, as far as I can
tell, was perfectly aware of this project for weeks. So if there was
some sources that the team considered that it merited my attention to
complete my thoughts on the topic, there was plenty of time to
provide them before I posted this message.
Our main strength is not our content but our
community, and I am
glad to see that many have already responded to you in such a
measured and polite way.
We completely agree on that. This is a wonderful
community. And
that's concerns for future of this very community which fueled this
project.
I only can reiterate all apologies to anyone that might have felt
personally attacked. I can go back to reformulate my message.
I hope you will help me to improve the research, or call it as you
like, with more relevant feedback and references.
Peace
Peace,
Markus
On 30.11.2017 09:55, John Erling Blad wrote:
Licensing was discussed in the start of the
project, as in start of
developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for
CC0 was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started
working for
Google.
As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first
week
of april), and the duscussion reemerged during
first week of
development. That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may),
as the
delivery of the laptoppen was delayed. I was
against CC0 as I
expected
problems with reuse og external data. The
arguments for CC0
convinced me.
And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and
Jens did too.