Re: Irisregister and the Wiki

[Gerry Snyder <geraldcsnyder@gmail.com>]

Background:

John's email was in response to a harried phone call from me during 
Friday night's Iris Chat. I was aghast to find out that some of the 
chatters were copying information from the irisregister and pasting it 
into the wiki. It seemed that one of John's greatest fears, loss of 
intellectual property, was already coming to pass.

When I suggested in the chat that the actions might be wrong, the 
replies were on the order of "the docents allow it, so it must be ok," 
"Bob Pries surely got board approval for everything before starting the 
project," "You mean AIS wants to restrict what I can do with information 
I paid for?" and (I think) "I am a docent and I was not told of any such 
restrictions."

So I called John and he got this discussion started.

Comments:

Although a cease and desist order needed to be mentioned in passing for 
the sake of completeness, it will certainly not be necessary for the 
current situation. If the board decides that such copying is not 
appropriate, those who have been doing it, or intending to do so, will 
refrain from it.

A very wide range of positions could be taken by the board, with some 
arguments for any of them. One extreme would be to close down the wiki, 
which would be the surest way to protect the intellectual property. The 
other extreme would be to automate the copying of R&I data into the 
wiki, or even pre-seed the wiki with all of the introductions.

Much more reasonable middle grounds would be to simply place 
instructions in the wiki (and irisregister if needed) with whatever 
policy is approved by the board, either yea or nay. I think such an 
explanation will be sufficient.


A very interesting issue.

Gerry

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to the AIS Secretary
<aissecretary@irises.org>
The archives for AISDiscuss are at:
http://www.aisboard.org/lists/aisdiscuss/