New subject: [Wikimedia-l] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

29 Nov 2017

Saluton ĉiuj,

I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta
Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#An_answer_to_Lydia_general_thinking_about_Wikidata_and_CC-0>,
because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community
on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely
misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm
extremely interested to know it, so please be bold.

Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind
that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I
wish it a bright future full of even more amazing things than what
it already brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.

Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

Thank you Lydia Pintscher
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29>
for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0>
miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have
been raised.

Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as
this inquiry on the topic
<https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_origine_du_choix,_enjeux,_et_prospections_sur_les_aspects_de_gouvernance_communautaire_et_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9quit%C3%A9_contributive>
advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata
choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who –
to make it short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph
team. Also it worth noting that Google funded a quarter of the
initial development work. Another quarter came from the Gordon and
Betty Moore Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half
the money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Institute
for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-1>.
To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the
puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm
of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version,
please see the research project (work in progress, only chapter 1
is in good enough shape, and it's only available in French so
far). Some proofs that this claim is completely wrong are welcome,
as it would be great that in fact that was the community that was
the driving force behind this single license choice and that it is
the best choice for its future, not the future of giant tech
companies. This would be a great contribution to bring such a
happy light on this subject, so we can all let this issue alone
and go back contributing in more interesting topics.

Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia.

Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge.
    So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal. 
This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible.
    Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic
    direction: Service and //*Equity*/
    <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/Endorsement#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity>.
    Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible.
    That is, starting where it confirms each others freedom.
    Because under this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery
    of others. 
CC-0 is one step towards that.
    That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have
    to agree without some convincing proof. 
Data is different from many other things we produce in Wikimedia
in that it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on
much more extensively.
    No it's not. From a data processing point of view, everything
    is data. Whether it's stored in a wikisyntax, in a relational
    database or engraved in stone only have a commodity side
    effect. Whether it's a random stream of bit generated by a
    dumb chipset or some encoded prose of Shakespeare make no
    difference. So from this point of view, no, what Wikidata
    store is not different from what is produced anywhere else in
    Wikimedia projects. 
    Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many things.
    But this is not because it's data, when elsewhere there would
    be no data. It's because it enforce data to be stored in a way
    that ease aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and
    so on. 

Our data lives from being able to write queries over millions of
statements, putting it into a mobile app, visualizing parts of it
on a map and much more.
    Sure. It also lives from being curated from millions[2]
    <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-2>
    of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a useless pile
    of random bytes. 
This means, if we require attribution, in a huge number of cases
attribution would need to go back to potentially millions of
editors and sources (even if that data is not visible in the end
result but only helped to get the result).
    No, it doesn't mean that. 
    First let's recall a few basics as it seems the whole answer
    makes confusion between attribution and distribution of
    contributions under the same license as the original.
    Attribution is crucial for traceability and so for reliable
    and trusted knowledge that we are targeting within the
    Wikimedia movement. The "same license" is the sole legal
    guaranty of equity contributors have. That's it, trusted
    knowledge and equity are requirements for the Wikimedia
    movement goals. That means withdrawing this requirements is
    withdrawing this goals. 
    Now, what would be the additional cost of storing sources in
    Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's already here as the
    "reference" attribute is part of the Wikibase item structure.
    So attribution is not a problem, you don't have to put it in
    front of your derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article:
    until you go to history, you have zero attribution visible,
    and it's ok. It's also have probably zero or negligible
    computing cost, as it doesn't have to be included in all
    computations, it just need to be retrievable on demand. 
    What would be the additional cost of storing licenses for each
    item based on its source? Well, adding a license attribute
    might help, but actually if your reference is a work item, I
    guess it might comes with a "license" statement, so zero
    additional cost. Now for letting user specify under which free
    licenses they publish their work, that would just require an
    additional attribute, a ridiculous weight when balanced with
    equity concerns it resolves. 
    Could that prevent some uses for some actors? Yes, that's
    actually the point, preventing abuse of those who doesn't want
    to act equitably. For all other actors a "distribute under
    same condition" is fine. 
This is potentially computationally hard to do and and depending
on where the data is used very inconvenient (think of a map with
hundreds of data points in a mobile app).
    OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive license,
    do exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way, allowing a
    license by item would enable to include OpenStreetMap data in
    WikiData, which is currently impossible due to the CC0 single
    license policy of the project. Too bad, it could be so useful
    to have this data accessible for Wikimedia projects, but who
    cares? 
This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to impose on
them.
    Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that Wikidata
    would care first of re-users which are in the phase with
    Wikimedia goal, so surely needs of Wikimedia community in
    particular and Free/Libre Culture in general should be
    considered. Do this re-users would be penalized by a copyleft
    license? Surely no, or they wouldn't use it extensively as
    they do. So who are this re-users for who it's thought
    preferable, without consulting the community, to not annoy
    with questions of equity and traceability? 
It would make it significantly harder to re-use our data and be in
direct conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge.
    No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a button
    on a computer to do that rather than this. What is in direct
    conflict with our clearly stated goals emerging from the 2017
    community consultation is going against equity and
    traceability. You propose to discard both to satisfy exogenous
    demands which should have next to no weight in decision
    impacting so deeply the future of our community. 
Whether data can be protected in this way at all or not depends on
the jurisdiction we are talking about. See this Wikilegal on on
database rights
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights> for
more details.
    It says basically that it's applicable in United States and
    Europe on different legal bases and extents. And for the rest
    of the world, it doesn't say it doesn't say nothing can apply,
    it states nothing. 
So even if we would have decided to require attribution it would
only be enforceable in some jurisdictions.
    What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be applicable
    in some country, so let's withdraw the few rights we have. 
Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also unfortunately
often means that people refrain from what they want to to for fear
of legal repercussions. This is directly in conflict with our goal
of spreading knowledge.
    Economic inequality, social inequity and legal imbalance might
    also refrain people from doing what they want, as they fear
    practical repercussions. CC0 strengthen this discrimination
    factors by enforcing people to withdraw the few rights they
    have to weight against the growing asymmetry that social
    structures are concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique
    license choice is in direct conflict with our goal of
    *equitably* spreading knowledge. 
    Also it seems like this statement suggest that releasing our
    contributions only under CC0 is the sole solution to diminish
    legal doubts. Actually any well written license would do an
    equal job regarding this point, including many copyleft
    licenses out there. So while associate a clear license to each
    data item might indeed diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an
    argument at all for enforcing CC0 as sole license available to
    contributors. 
    Moreover, just putting a license side by side with a work does
    not ensure that the person who made the association was
    legally allowed to do so. To have a better confidence in the
    legitimacy of a statement that a work is covered by a certain
    license, there is once again a traceability requirement. For
    example, Wikidata currently include many items which were
    imported from misc. Wikipedia versions, and claim that the
    derived work obtained – a set of items and statements – is
    under CC0. That is a hugely doubtful statement and it
    alarmingly looks like license laundering
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>. This is
    true for Wikipedia, but it's also true for any source on which
    a large scale extraction and import are operated, whether
    through bots or crowd sourcing. 
    So the Wikidata project is currently extremely misplaced to
    give lessons on legal ambiguity, as it heavily plays with
    legal blur and the hope that its shady practises won't fall
    under too much scrutiny. 
Licenses that require attribution are often used as a way to try
to make it harder for big companies to profit from openly
available resources.
    No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to make it
    harder for big companies to profit from openly available
    resources/ *in inequitable manners*. That's completely
    different. Copyleft licenses give the same rights to big
    companies and individuals in a manner that lower
    socio-economic inequalities which disproportionally advantage
    the former. 
The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working.
    Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend, so of
    course it's not working for this goal. But for the goal that
    copyleft licenses aims at, there are clear evidences that yes
    it works. 
Big companies have the legal and engineering resources to handle
both the legal minefield and the technical hurdles easily.
    There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war material
    analogy is disrespectful. That's true that copyleft licenses
    might come with some constraints that non-copyleft free
    licenses don't have, but that the price for fostering equity.
    And it's a low price, that even individuals can manage, it
    might require a very little extra time on legal
    considerations, but on the other hand using the free work is
    an immensely vast gain that worth it. In Why you shouldn't use
    the Lesser GPL for your next library
    <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is stated
    /proprietary software developers have the advantage of money;
    free software developers need to make advantages for each
    other/. This might be generalised as /big companies have the
    advantage of money; free/libre culture contributors need to
    make advantages for each other/. So at odd with what pretend
    this fallacious claims against copyleft licenses, they are not
    a "minefield and the technical hurdles" that only big
    companies can handle. All the more, let's recall who financed
    the initial development of Wikidata: only actors which are
    related to big companies. 
Who it is really hurting is the smaller start-up, institution or
hacker who can not deal with it.
    If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then this is
    just plainly false. Smaller actors have more to gain in
    preserving mutual benefit of the common ecosystem that a
    copyleft license fosters. 
With Wikidata we are making structured data about the world
available for everyone.
    And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license
    to be achieved. 
We are leveling the playing field to give those who currently
don’t have access to the knowledge graphs of the big companies a
chance to build something amazing.
    And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole
    license. Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable project on
    this point, as it allows unfair actors to take it all, add
    some interesting added value that our community can not
    afford, reach/reinforce an hegemonic position in the ecosystem
    with their own closed solution. And, ta ta, Wikidata can be
    discontinued quietly, just like Google did with the defunct
    Freebase which was CC-BY-SA before they bought the company
    that was running it, and after they imported it under CC0 in
    Wikidata as a new attempt to gather a larger community of free
    curators. And when it will have performed license laundering
    of all Wikimedia projects works with shady mass extract and
    import, Wikimedia can disappear as well. Of course big
    companies benefits more of this possibilities than actors with
    smaller financial support and no hegemonic position. 
Thereby we are helping more people get access to knowledge from
more places than just the few big ones.
    No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies to
    reinforce their position in which they can distribute
    information manipulated as they wish, without consideration
    for traceability and equity considerations. Allowing
    contributors to also use copyleft licenses would be far more
    effective to /collect and use different forms of free, trusted
    knowledge/ that /focus efforts on the knowledge and
    communities that have been left out by structures of power and
    privilege/, as stated in /Our strategic direction: Service and
    Equity/. 

CC-0 is becoming more and more common.
    Just like economic inequality
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>. But that
    is not what we are aiming to foster in the Wikimedia movement. 
Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and are
happy with the experience. Among them are the European Union,
Europeana, the National Library of Sweden and the Metropolitan
Museum of Modern Arts.
    Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia community, they
    have their own goals and plan to be sustainable that does not
    necessarily meet what our community can follow. Different
    contexts require different means. States and their
    institutions can count on tax revenue, and if taxpayers ends
    up in public domain works, that's great and seems fair. States
    are rarely threatened by companies, they have legal lever to
    pressure that kind of entity, although conflict of interest
    and lobbying can of course mitigate this statement. 
    Importing that kind of data with proper attribution and
    license is fine, be it CC0 or any other free license. But
    that's not an argument in favour of enforcing on benevolent a
    systematic withdraw of all their rights as single option to
    contribute. 
All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our data to
give attribution to Wikidata because we believe it is in the
interest of all parties involved.
    That's it, zero legal hope of equity. 
And our experience shows that many of our re-users do give credit
to Wikidata even if they are not forced to.
    Experience also show that some prominent actors like Google
    won't credit the Wikimedia community anymore when generating
    directly answer based on, inter alia, information coming from
    Wikidata, which is itself performing license laundering of
    Wikipedia data. 
Are there no downsides to this? No, of course not. Some people
chose not to participate, some data can't be imported and some
re-users do not attribute us. But the benefits I have seen over
the years for Wikidata and the larger open knowledge ecosystem far
outweigh them.
    This should at least backed with some solid statistics that it
    had a positive impact in term of audience and contribution in
    Wikimedia project as a whole. Maybe the introduction of
    Wikidata did have a positive effect on the evolution of total
    number of contributors, or maybe so far it has no significant
    correlative effect, or maybe it is correlative with a decrease
    of the total number of active contributors. Some plots would
    be interesting here. Mere personal feelings of benefits and
    hindrances means nothing here, mine included of course. 
    Plus, there is not even the beginning of an attempt to A/B
    test with a second Wikibase instant that allow users to select
    which licenses its contributions are released under, so there
    is no possible way to state anything backed on relevant
    comparison. The fact that they are some people satisfied with
    the current state of things doesn't mean they would not be
    even more satisfied with a more equitable solution that allows
    contributors to chose a free license set for their
    publications. All the more this is all about the
    sustainability and fostering of our community and reaching its
    goals, not immediate feeling of satisfaction for some people. 

 *

    [1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op-ed>

 *

    [2] according to the next statement of Lydia

Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against Wikidata. The
motivation behind this message is a hope that one day one might
participate in Wikidata with the same respect for equity and
traceability that is granted in other Wikimedia projects.

Kun multe da vikiamo,
mathieu

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