Topic: Devtome.com writers - your content WILL be used in ways you do no like (Read 712 times)

It can happily be both.

See what I mean about how people get wierd?

Of course you can make commercial use of your own content, code, or other work.

Perhaps you could expressly cede it to a custom license specifically forbidding yourself from doing so, but ...


Nevermind.

What a silly thread. All open-source work has this characteristics. Even Bitcoin.


Then it would'nt anymore qualify as "open source" or "open content".

Fin Shaggy plans on publishing a Devtome book. Maybe he's willing to share some of his profits?

Maybe they should offer different licenses but as far as I know, you can make commercial use of your work as well.

Operation Fabulous ads would take care of that.


I feel much the same way. I've been meaning to investigate devcoin because it sounds very interesting on the surface but some of its more vocal supporters don't exactly inspire confidence in the project.

Any frustration you have there could be easily solved by submitting something yourself on devtome and getting paid for it

Just to clarify on your 'commercial interests' - yes indeed but as a paid endeavour, one that may in future accrue further payment in dvc price rises, that may lead to greater self publicity, and should spread the devcoin and general crypto opportunities (there are articles/info on other cryptos, it's not devcoin only; in fact there are probably more articles on bitcoin litecoin and others than on devcoin) - that commerial interest is the author him or her self. Any opportunity for monetisation is completely in the hands and into the hands of those submitting their articles, with any further commercialisation limited without copyright, as is the objective.

Coinerd: from experience everybody is aware of the factors involved. Regardless whoever is doing the signing up at the time reminds anybody writing about open-source (I appreciate you know this, just reiterating to be clear). I won't refer to FUD because whatever the intention it helps to clarify the benefits of devtome and the post only serves to provide an opportunity to do so and the win/win - so  the conclusion remains the same.

Yes we are all in general agreement here.

But I think (as evinced in the OP here) that there are a lot of people (possibly the majority) of people involved with the project who don't have that level headed perspective or understanding of the factors involved.

hotcoldcoin's warning is vague and emotional and looks like FUD.  I'm surprised by the following banter that indicates he is (or was) a devcoin supporter. 

It doesn't help that while having a tumultuous conversation about Fin Shaggy here comes another devcoin thread expounding on what I feel is one of the absolute worst facets of "The FOSS Community".

People who apply restrictive licenses to "keep their code 'free'" offend me dearly. There is no altruism there.

 If you're going to be angry when someone else gets paid to republish your work in a better, friendlier, or more usable format - or use it as the basis of some other product which has the added value of their work to make it so - devtome isn't the place for you.

And for those people who heard what weisoq is saying before but didn't understand that it translates to exactly that hotcoldcoin is saying (that's right all three of us are making the same actual point) perhaps my post will help bridge the gap to understanding about how you get from weisoq's version to hotcoldcoin's.

If someone were scared with what hotcoldcoin posted, or offended with what I posted, yet thought that they agreed with what weisoq posted, they need to analyze what they are doing

Hmmm, the sun's coming up and I haven't slept.  Not sure if that made things any clearer 

Thanks. I don't completely follow all that but I think we're generally agreeing? Payment is made in devcoins and beautifying/monetising content is precicely the plan as far as I understand. On your points about style, tools, monetisation - they're all good points and I don't disagree. It's not my area or focus as such but I see it as a work in progress. It's early days and there are around 500k hits per month and about 100 people writing. To me that seems to offer opportunity to build from, and constructive criticism is exactly what is needed.

Speaking for myself here, but another significant benefit of devtome (and devcoin generally) is in getting information and the opportunities of cryptocurrencies out to people who would otherwise not hear about them or have no interest even if they did. That is the 99% of the world not on this forum or with specific tech interests. The particular pros/cons of devtome are debateable, as is the balancing act between word reward and other developments in software, hardware etc (and fairly so) but for broad take up and adoption, for word of mouth to spread, and for success outside a niche such developments need to appeal to other walks of life. It's not perfect, but devtome is one of the efforts on that path that could pay mutually rewarding and significant dividends and for devcoin, and with it bitcoin, litecoin and others.

here's a related example:

http://fairytalesandfolklore.com/

I own that site and it's clearly not monetized, however it's seeing a couple thousand hits a month and google wants me to put ads on it. It's sat idle for so long, it was originally developed using google friend-connect in like, 2008 or something.

You can bet I didn't generate any of that content it was all public domain (gutenberg) stuff.  But it doesn't matter because gutenberg is unpleasant to use.  Take it out and chop it into the pretty bits and present it in a searchable, accessible, easy to read format is work, and it's a service that a couple thousand people per month are appreciating.

I can tell you right now it would be trivial to make a better, nicer, more useful site than devtome - which seems so incredibly hard to manage because it's in a completely wrong tool.  It actually pains me to say this (I hate wordpress) but moving from a "wiki" format to ANYTHING With categories and some sorting would be a tremendous improvement. This is the first time in my entire life I've recommended wordpress for something besides a blog.  

A nice re-skin of devtome would probably generate enough pageviews to put ads on it. Dumping/ignoring a good part of it would help. getting it out of that wikidiculous format and into some proper order would be the icing on the cake.

And any SEO will tell you that a properly organized, sorted and categorized site with google ads on it would be so much more attractive to both bots and people that soon it would be QUITE PROBABLE for google to start sending people to this commercial site, instead of into the hole of devtome.

And people would appreciate it because while search may be leading people to devtome right now, it's my guess that most of them leave in a hurry when they realize it looks like a giant spam honeypot.

And then all of the people that were happy to "share with the community" will suddenly turn into greedy monsters crying about how their work was STOLEN and it's not FAIR. Even though they were happy to sell it into the public domain it for a few devcoins because they didn't know how to make use of it. Hypocrites.

There's part of the problem,  You don't get to take payment, and then get self righteous about your "sharing" and "Control of your art". You sold it. Not gifted, or contributed, or shared it, you sold it. As weisoq notes it's practically shoved in people's face as they sign away their rights.

But that won't stop the green-eyed monster from coming out now will it?

Maybe I'll do this tomorrow. What the hell.  According to unthinking bit devtome itself has plenty of pageviews now.  But it's not monetized because he/she "doesn't like U.S. politics" and apparently no one working with devtome can find a non-U.S. advertiser?

There is some basic wrongness here.

This is an interesting alternative idea. I wasn't even thinking about it but this is just off the charts.

Personal proof, indeed.  I'm sorry to sound derisive as I see that there are some nice people hoping to achieve good things by throwing their weight behind the devcoin foundation.  But really it's a mess. And I suspect that considering the sort of recruiting being done right now there will be a lot of doe-eyed innocent who really didn't think of "taking devcoin for their work" as "selling their work" and are legitimately shocked by this.

Why are you worried about what some "mysterious commercial entity" might do anyways. You're all "contributing" to pay Fin Shaggy's rent and support his hilarious crusade while devtome rots and collapses under it's own weight and lack of even basic management.

 A couple of weeks ago I was thinking to get involved with some of the devcoin stuff, the basic ideas behind it sound great. But the community surrounding it is pretty screwed up right now. The more I watch and research the less I want to get involved.

But not because someone might "steal" my work that I got paid to put into the public domain.

Welcome back. The numbers of sign-ups rose when you were posting before so when I say welcome back I mean it...

The issues you raise are correct, but completely transparent. Devtome is open-source. That means content may be copied anywhere. That's the whole point of open source. Any exisiting (and published) authors are reminded of that before submitting their work, although that's generally the very reason they publish on devtome. Somebody who has invested time and effort into creating something of value to them generally wants to share it.

I'm currently signing people up for devtome (rather than just writing) and the approach by authors has ranged from realisation that published work isn't going to accrue huge dividends under copyright, or that it's niche to the point of a limited private market, to further the process of getting work out there for anybody interested to enquire about more etc etc. For those not published it's an alternative to keeping work unread in a file or gathering dust in a drawer or again to start a process of publishing and perhaps notoriety. Anybody with concerns over losing their life's work wouldn't publish on devtome. Many have submitted one chapter, or a short story, or something to introduce their writings in realisation of this. I would obviously concede that Devtome is yet to be a publicly reknown and major source of new and interesting writing, but that doesn't diminish from the opportunity for a writer to make their own assessment of the risks/rewards of using devtome as a first step, or in just getting paid something for their efforts.

On the commercialisation point, yes but without copyright options are limited. Do you have any examples of such commercial use that will make money from writings without the author and or devtome benefitting from it? First, writers are paid in devcoin. Any assessment of relative value between that payment and alternative and prospective other compensation is something each writer considers. Secondly, surely be definition if a 'commercial' interest perceived some benefit in utilising writings on devtome that precisely underwrites the value of devtome as an open source repository?

Be interested to hear your points and examples.

Sure it's on Fin Shaggy's list of "great ideas".

Except, to be fair, he would see some of it go back to the foundation. others won't.

I already noted that someone said they published a book they wrote and owned copyright to on devtome.  I wonder if he realizes it's now essentially public domain.

This will never matter for most of the stuff that's currently on devtome though, and they DID get paid to put it there.


Personal proof of what?  The license is public.

interesting i hate to ask but do you have personal proof of this as it is disturbing to say the least..
thanks for the heads up
noel

reserved

Just a friendly reminder to all writers contributing to the Devcoin wiki devtome.com:

Your content WILL be used in ways you do not like, in ways you do not approve, and in ways you never thought of.

All content on the devtome wiki is released under the CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.


That last line is important.   Commercial interests are going to take your writing and make money off it.   They will do it 100% within the license restrictions, and not a drop will go to the devcoin foundation, and there is NOTHING you can do about it.