7.4.4 Open Publication License

Location: http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/
Excerpts:
"The Open Publication works may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, provided that the terms of this license are adhered to, and that this license or an incorporation of it by reference (with any options elected by the author(s) and/or publisher) is displayed in the reproduction...''
"Commercial redistribution of Open Publication-licensed material is permitted...''
"Any publication in standard (paper) book form shall require the citation of the original publisher and author...''
"The copyright to each Open Publication is owned by its author(s) or designee...''
"If any part of this license is found to be unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remaining portions of the license remain in force...''
"All modified versions of documents covered by this license, including translations, anthologies, compilations and partial documents, must meet the following requirements:''
"1. The modified version must be labeled as such. 2. The person making the modifications must be identified and the modifications dated. 3. Acknowledgment of the original author and publisher if applicable must be retained according to normal academic citation practices. 4. The location of the original unmodified document must be identified. 5. The original author's (or authors') name(s) may not be used to assert or imply endorsement of the resulting document without the original author's (or authors') permission...''
"The author(s) and/or publisher of an Open Publication-licensed document may elect certain options by appending language to the reference to or copy of the license. These options are considered part of the license instance and must be included with the license (or its incorporation by reference) in derived works.''
"A. To prohibit distribution of substantively modified versions without the explicit permission of the author(s). "Substantive modification" is defined as a change to the semantic content of the document, and excludes mere changes in format or typographical corrections...''
"B. To prohibit any publication of this work or derivative works in whole or in part in standard (paper) book form for commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder...''
"Open Publication authors who want to include their own license on Open Publication works may do so, as long as their terms are not more restrictive than the Open Publication license.''
Comments:

Advantages of the license:

• Freedom of use. On the other hand, the license sets freedom of choice by an author above freedom of use of his work by the public, thus giving an author the right to limit use. Thus, we have ``freedom to put limitations'' on use and this feature may be considered as ``limitation of the license''.
  
• Mandatory attribution to the author.
  
• Mandatory attribution to the publisher. This feature makes the license attractive to a publisher and, consequently, potentially more fruitful for an author.
  
• The license is not limited to a specific area of culture and can be applied to any form of publication.
  
• It automatically applies to derivatives.
  

1. As we mentioned above, the license may be extended to be more restrictive. It is interesting to note, that the license allows an author to extend it by any unique features that put no additional restrictions on use of the work. Thus, the license allows for extra non-restrictive features and extra restrictions as well, which is a contradiction.
   
2. It is based on copyright law only.
   
3. It is limited to publication activity only.