A couple of years ago I had a discussion with Martin Weller about ‘openness’ spanning his blog and mine. Over the past couple of days I’ve been considering this area again, with reference to David Wiley’s work.
For some time I have been licensing my work under a Creative Commons license a CC BY-SA 3.0 or a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. However, I’ve always wrestled with this choice. My dilemma isn’t the one of many of my colleagues about not wanting other people to use my material in ways that I might not like. No, my continuing struggle is with the fact that I am requiring acknowledgement for my contribution in whatever small way to human knowledge and endeavour. But should this really be a motivation in my efforts for openness or should I be more altruistic and publish using CC0 as Public Domain? Do you have to develop a reputation for your work first before you can adopt a more altruistic stance? Or is it just a product of the current norms in society that a reputation is required? I don’t know the answers, but any input would be appreciated.
