Wikiversity:Non-Commercial Tag Issues

The problem

The problem is that there is a large amount of courseware out there that cannot be incorporated in Wikipedia or Wikiversity because of a restriction on "non-commercial use." The purpose of this page is to describe the problem and think about solutions for fixing it.

Why Non-Commercial tags are a problem

NC tags effectively prevent mass collaboration. If you have a document with fifty authors each with a non-commercial tag, then you will need every author to give their permission before you can use the object commercially. This also effectively prevents people with commercial interests from participating in document editing, and also prevents many uses of the document.

The main fear of people who put in the NC tag is to that someone will use the work to derive "unjust riches". The fear is that someone with a commercial interest will take the work and make a huge amount of money, and that the original author will get nothing. This is a perfectly justifiable fear, but the education effort should point out that the solution to this is the "share-alike" tag.

Why Non-Commercial tags are not a problem

Wikiversity does not have to incorporate everything. Wikiversity pages can always link to learning resources that are under a "no commercial re-use" licensing restriction.