BuddyPress.org

Couple of quick points:

Transparancy is always key.

Users want control over their own data.

WP/WPMU/BP makes it very complicated to manage member data.

And would it be a good choice to set creative commons licenses for certain types of data?

I would NOT appreciate getting pushed into using this fake license from an academic with a political agenda, namely undermining copyright law and intellectual property rights. Creative Commons is slapping a fake label on something that already existed; public domain. I don’t work for Larry Lessig. I don’t have to ask Larry Lessig permission for anything.

I am/was a journalist. The idea that all content should be free is basically destroying the media business. That’s great if you’re blogging from your mum’s basement, not great if you’re producing content to pay the rent – any content; text, video, design, code, etc.

There is a lot of fluff and hypocrisy about open source, data portability etc. Facebook and Twitter are finding out the hard way. Everybody loves them when they’re free and open, but now they have to figure out how to make money to continue to pay employees when the venture capital money runs out.

Proponents of giving stuff away for free are usually making their money some other way; they’re academics, work for the government, sell consulting services or hardware, live in their mum’s basement, etc. Google got rich and powerful claiming all content for themselves to sell ads in. Too many publishers went along and dug their own grave.

So I’d like to keep a lot of data proprietary. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re clear and transparant about it. Publishers have always done it that way and technology does not necessarily require that to change.