Web Sites And Open Content License Issues

phlako66 asks: "I am one of the creators of a large tutorial created for a university to teach undergraduates 'information literacy' skills. Recently we have received a lot of interest from other institutions about licensing our tutorial for use on their campuses. From its inception the creators have been determined to keep the content free to students from any institution. Current interest in the tutorial though has forced us to investigate further issues of copyright and intellectual property. We are considering making the content of the tutorial available under the Open Content Licence. I think that the Open Content License is perfect for an academic setting and can actually aid the further growth and proliferation of intellectual content. However, I'm not sure what the university is going to say about this, and was wondering if anyone had any similar experience with academic institutions and such licenses, or could foresee any potential problems with this type of licensing for large Web sites?"

Details

[turg]

I assume the university currently holds the copyright? (If not, let us know who does) In any case, I think the actual authors' desires would cary some weight, even if they no longer have legal control of the material.

In general, before you try to convince people, make sure you know exactly who needs to be convinced. There is probably one person or group in charge of making these decisions for the university and the more other people you talk to about it, the more "No"s you will need to turn into "Yes"s

I would use the argument that releasing it under Open Content License is akin to having it published in an academic journal -- other academics can repeat your experiment, make modifications (improvements, even) and report their results, thus improving the system for everybody. This is really exactly how an academic community is supposed to work, and it could be difficult to argue against this, if it is presented right. With others already asking to use the system, you can really talk it up as a "rare opportunity" that will be great for the school. Don't apologize as though you're asking the school to give up something -- present it so that it will be a (hopefully, only hypothetical :-) person who opposes the Open Content idea looks like the one who is asking the school to give up something.

If getting the money is really an issue, maybe you could propose the type of two-tier system that OSS companies use -- where you pay for "full support" (however you define that), but can still get the free download.

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