Global Moxie

Today I added a new item to my projects page, a PDF version of the official documentation for the Prototype.js JavaScript framework. The content of the PDF is admittedly of interest only to geeks like me who toil away in the cogs and gears of web applications. What’s more generally interesting is the fact that I’m actually able to produce and distribute the PDF in the first place.

I didn’t write the content, I don’t own it, and the copyright belongs to someone else. So how is it that I’m allowed to create and publish this thing? It’s all thanks to the “some rights reserved” movement that applies open-source principles to encourage sharing of all types of content.

Here’s what happened.

I use the Prototype.js JavaScript library every day. It’s a nifty open-source framework that makes it possible to develop JavaScript code without starting to bleed from your ears. But for two years, Prototype had no official instructions for how to use it. So, hapless developers like me had to muddle through the code library and sort it out for ourselves.

That all changed with last month’s release of Prototype 1.5, when the Prototype team published a complete online reference guide. And man it’s great, a really thorough guide, with lots of code examples for every aspect of the API (“application programming interface,” the code that developers use to make the thing go).

My only disappointment was that it was available only as a set of 100+ web pages on the Prototype site. This is the kind of stuff that I like to have on paper, sitting on my desk within easy reach, but the presentation didn’t allow it.

So I whipped up a Perl script that would fetch all of the pages and flip them into docbook XML for easy conversion into a book format. Perfect, within a couple of hours I had a spiffy little PDF of the complete documentation. It was the exact same content bundled in an entirely new form.

Photo by St. Murse.

I dropped a line to Justin Palmer, who led the Prototype documentation effort, to ask if it was cool to share the PDF on my site. He replied that the team had decided to license the content under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which allows anyone to change it, mix it, mash it and republish it, provided they give credit and license it under the same terms.

The upshot is that the Prototype gang has set free not only their code but their content, too. Folks like me can riff on it and create new and different formats that meet our specific needs. That means I can make and distribute my PDF version, and someone else can likewise take that PDF and build on it, too.

It’s the kind of thing that makes perfect sense as part of an open-source project like Prototype, and so perhaps it’s no surprise. But it’s worth noting that the trend is happening in other realms, too.

For the last six years, the Creative Commons (CC) organization and its licenses have led a burgeoning “copyleft” movement that enables authors of all types of intellectual property to protect their ownership while also encouraging others to build on their works. This is how Creative Commons describes its mission:

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation....

We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

Some examples:

• Flickr makes it easy to license your photos under a CC license to allow others to use the works under a variety of flexible conditions (commercial vs. non-commercial uses, modifications allowed or not).

• Several musicians collaborated with Wired magazine to create a music CD CC-licensed to encourage the songs to be sampled in other songs. Participants included the Beastie Boys, Chuck D and David Byrne.

• MIT has published all of its course materials (over 1800 courses!) under a CC license that allows anyone to put them to use.

• GarageBand.com offers a slew of CC-licensed music to allow listeners to discover new bands.

You get the gist: Authors create something and, while maintaining ownership of their creations, give up some exclusive distribution rights. The idea is to let their works fly farther and find different forms than they otherwise would under tight in-house control.

The modest step of creating the Prototype PDF is the first time that I’ve acted on a Creative Commons license to make a derivative work, and it’s got me thinking about my own content licenses.

To date, I’ve been very conservative in licensing my works. Although I did release the Prototype PDF and Perl Critic for BBEdit projects under attribution-sharelike CC licenses, all of the other content on this site, along with Big Medium and its support materials, carry the stern “all rights reserved” label. That goes for my Flickr photos, too. I’m not sure that I’m doing myself a favor by holding those rights so closely.

While the Big Medium code will almost certainly remain under a stricter proprietary license, I think it makes sense to consider licensing Big Medium’s support materials under more liberal terms. Ditto for my blog posts and Flickr photos. If people can find uses for them, I’d be happy to see those works find their way into the world. Food for thought.

Meantime, steal this PDF.