[Advocacy Advisors] Questions on Economic Contribution of Public Domain and Open Licensing

[Luis Villa]

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

>
>
> 2014-09-27 1:39 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa <lvilla at wikimedia.org>:
>
>> On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:25 AM, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <
>> dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov at 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
   <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2010&q=motivation+of+open+source+developers&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5>,
   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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