Grants talk:Project/E@I/Testamentu

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through January 2, 2019.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 2 2018 will occur January 3-January 28, 2019. Grantees will be announced March 1, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:03, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Comments/questions

Thank you for this interesting proposal. However I have a few questions/comments:

1. If one drops such a noble language as "freeing of creative works" then what you proposing is just an international database of CC and similar licenses. Is this true?
2. Unfortunately the project lacks any specifics about how this database/website will be set up. For instance, how are you going to verify the identity of contributors? What measures need to be taken to prevent accounts and the whole database from being compromised?
3. All these are serious matters having various legal implications and if not addressed properly they will result in a failure of the project.
4. It is not clear from the project what will be immediate benefits for WMF and the Wikimedia Community? The project as written will primary benefit people and organizations outside the Wikimedia ecosystem.
5. The project requests a relatively large money of 43,500 EUR but lacks a budget and the project plan looks seriously incomplete.

Ruslik (talk) 19:33, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ruslik and thanks for your comment! At the first glance it was hard for me to understand your reasoning because you was mentioning non-existence of some parts, that I know they are there. But than I found the reason: in the grant proposal was commented whole long, important parts of the text. That was done in preparation phase as we had used Google Documents and they did the automatic replacement. You are absolutely right that in the visible version that we have presented, it look like unfinished draft. But, in the commented text it was much bigger and complete. Please check this diff to confirm.

With this new context in mind, here are answers for your questions / comments for even more precise explanation:

1. It is not true that we are proposing merely database of CC. Really, facilitating the liberation process is the main purpose of the tool, please see Goal 1.
2. Yeah, the text is now not only published, but newly also visible. Please see it at "Lawyer analysis".
3. We absolutely, totally agree! That is why we have already before the decision to go to the project consulted JUDr. Zuzana Adamová, PhD (the Director of the Institute of Intellectual Property Law and Information Technologies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Trnava and the Project Lead of Creative Commons Slovakia), JUDr. Richard Bednárik, PhD. (member of the same faculty and also Project Lead of CC SK) and another lawyers about the topic. The decision to go to the project was based on their friendly, unofficial consultation stating that we can overcome the law obstacles. These people are the lawyers to make the detailed analysis, dedication document and the whole law part.
4. Please consult the text now, as it is wholly visible now.
   • Please note that we are aware, that the project will need some time to bring results. That is by its nature, as it works also with delayed liberation, so need also our delayed gratification (see the metaphor of planting a tree). Also, as the project works with masses, it will need some time to get well known (see the note about goals).
5. Now are visible the Project plan and Budget.

Please, let me know if I can make things even clearer! --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 22:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the corrections. Three more questions:

1. The lawyer consultations are only for Slovak or EU law, as I understand? Are you going to consult lawyers from countries with different legal systems?
2. Is this project sustainable? After the grant ends how will the website be maintained?
3. What is the project duration?

Ruslik (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Great questions, here are the answers:

1. tldr: We are going to use service of Slovakian attorneyship which will consult with couple of abroad lawyers.
   • Longer clarification: No Slovakian attorneyship is authorized to interpret law of abroad state. With that in mind we was thinking about several scenarios from working strictly to Slovakian law to consult every state on Earth. Working only with Slovakian law in mind was considered too risky for worldwide web service. Consultation of every state on Earth would be very time consuming and super hugely expensive (as well as return of investment would drastically diminish with very small nations, where it would be hard to find competent lawyer, and the desired outcome (liberation of creative works) would be of small amount due to small population). So we have decided to go the middle way - make the document the most general as possible (in order to be valid worldwide) and consult couple of lawyers from abroad. The lawyer for this project, Zuzana Adamová, is active in Creative Commons community (she is a Project Lead of CC SK) so she has good network of contacts. This consultation with abroad lawyers will minimize the risk of non-compatibility of the dedication document and will enable our lawyer to adapt it. Also, the final phase of the project (polish phase) is about gathering feedback a eventual adaptation. Mrs. Adamová has preliminary confirmed this to be the most viable way.
2. tldr: The projects is sustainable - it will require little maintenance and we have enough people.
   • Sustainability is an important aspect of our work (btw, also in the environmental meaning ;). As we are creating and maintaining several, even quite big, websites since 2002 we are aware of the need for maintenance (both technical and of content). So this project is designed to need very little maintenance after the polish phase. And so, we have enough people, capabilities and willingness to run and maintain the web for years (that is part of the reason we have organisation, to give more sustainability to our projects). Anyway, the source code is going to be published so anyone capable can fork it and run his or her own branch, what promotes sustainability of the projects even outside of our organiastion.
   • As only side note, we are thinking about the second version of Testamentu, which would not only help facilitate the liberation process but also archive the creative works themself. Such version would definitely require more maintenance and resources. But for now it is only possibility for future and not very related to this grant request.
3. The duration is 9 months. I have just added it to the request, thanks for your notice!

As always, ask anything, Ruslik! --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 16:30, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Project/E@I/Testamentu

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.3
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.5
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.8
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	4.5
Additional comments from the Committee: Little immediate benefit, but, potentially, huge future benefit. The proposal may partially fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It has a potential for online impact. However its sustainability is in question as maintenance of the website will require funding, which sources are not clear. Not sure that is the priority of Wikimedia: we can turn from knowledge to bunch of data that aren't linked, used, notable, etc This builds on work in OTRS and Creative Commons. I would like to see a marketing effort like CC has for what they propose. The project is highly innovative in sense that it purports to solve the problem of centralized storage of free licenses. However risks appear to be relatively high. It is still not clear to me whether the creation of such a website is feasible taking into account widely different copyright laws. The success can be measured. Not innovative, I've heard about similar projects before but they weren't successful The team possesses the ability to execute the project and the budget is realistic at the first glance. The project duration (9 months) maybe realistic as well. No legal understanding, 50% of budget is aimed on the feasibility study There doesn't seem to be enough focus on engagement with the current community. The project obviously targets the whole Wikimedia Community but especially the Commons and Wikisource projects. The project has community support and supports diversity through is multilingual nature. If more attention were given to a CC-like rollout, I would definitely endorse. I have serious doubts about the feasibility and sustainability of this project but I am willing to support a scaled down version of it, basically a feasibility study. The main goal of such a study should be to establish through consultations with lawyers and communities that the such a website is feasible and create its basic design. Unlikely to be executed, payment mostly goes to lawyers that won't give any real contribution, not innovative and not in scope of Wikimedia strategy

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next week

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. You can read more about their reasons for this decision in their comments above. Before the committee finalizes this decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback carefully and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page by 5pm UTC on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

@Petro666, Donjuŝka, Mutichou, Etuardu, and KuboF Hromoslav: Please see note above about the opportunity to respond to committee comments before they finalize a decision on your proposal. Please let me know if you have any questions. With thanks, --I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:48, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Dear Committee and I JethroBT (WMF), please find our responds for several of your comments. We would like to answer more of them, but without your additional clarification (see our questions below) it is hard.

• Little immediate benefit, but, potentially, huge future benefit.

We totally agree, the project has much bigger benefit from the longer perspective - and this is the reason, why it should have been created years ago! Right now, however, is the second best time! :) The sooner the project will exist (and collect the rights for the works), the sooner the benefits can start coming in! And thanks to the project we can make the free knowledge much larger and grow much faster.

• The proposal may partially fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It has a potential for online impact. However its sustainability is in question as maintenance of the website will require funding, which sources are not clear.

As we have already replied similar request: E@I has the capacities and the will to maintain the project in the future.

Yes, the source of funding is not clear as we do not yet know what our main financial source for this project will be after some time. But the same could have been said eg. about Wikipedia - in the beginning, nobody knew, where the money for it would come from! What we know for a fact is that we want to create such site/project and are ready to maintain it - whatever the costs.

Normally, since 2009 we receive funding every year from EU (mainly Erasmus+ projects) for educational projects. Outside of that, we receive donations from our members, users and visitors of our projects/events. We utilize such manner to upkeep cca. 20 other sites, such as eg. http://deutsch.info, https://russky.info, http://slovake.eu, http://cyberhelp.eu, http://lingvo.info etc.

• Not sure that is the priority of Wikimedia: we can turn from knowledge to bunch of data that aren't linked, used, notable, etc

We can use an OTRS as an parallel here. OTRS (permissions queue) is a system for the possibility to liberate own works but it does not guarantee that the particular work will be used in a live wikimedia project. Last time in Slovak Wikipedia there was a discussion about what to do with non-encyclopedic texts with OTRS permission. The clear consensus was to delete such texts. Does it mean that OTRS is unappropriate, bad or failed system? Definitely not! We just have to remember to use common sense and only the appropriate works.

Similarly with Testamentu: Wikimedia community is going to cherry pick appropriate works, which will enrich our projects by high quality free content providing free knowledge to the world.

It is natural that Testamentu is going to attract not only bestselling books, professional photos, high quality music albums or datasets of linked data, but also a great deal of low quality anything. We see the same pattern all over the Internet, like in YouTube or even in Wiki Loves Monuments. But this is not a problem for Wikimedia community at all - our community will be free to use high quality content as well as not to use the low quality one. What we as a movement should strive for is support that the amount of high quality content liberated by Testamentu will be as big as possible.

About the priorities: We have a Strategy Direction for 2030 and there is a section called We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia. It states: “We will continue to build the infrastructure for free knowledge for our communities. We will go further by offering it as a service to others in the network of knowledge. We will continue to build the partnerships that enable us to develop knowledge we can't create ourselves.” That is valid for such initiatives as making the WikiBase extension easily installable (in order to spread its use and so the amount of (hopely free) data already available in fully compatible format for rapid use on Wikidata) as well as - in our humble opinion - for websites to help people liberate their works.

• The project is highly innovative in sense that it purports to solve the problem of centralized storage of free licenses. However risks appear to be relatively high. It is still not clear to me whether the creation of such a website is feasible taking into account widely different copyright laws. The success can be measured.

From the very start we've been in talks with professional lawyers, mostly with JUDr. Zuzana Adamová, PhD., the Project Lead of Creative Commons Slovakia and the Director of the Institute of Intellectual Property Law and Information Technologies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Trnava and our colleague and friend in free culture movement. Here is her explanation of the issue of wildly different copyright laws:

“From the legal perspective it is necessary to point out that the applicant is fully aware of the basic premise that if the project would be dependent on different legal regulations, - with a high probability – it will not be successful. Therefore, the TESTAMENTU project is based on the principle of contractual freedom which corresponds with the nature of public licenses (Creative Commons ect.).

Basically every country with modern copyright regulation supports the above-mentioned principle and therefore the aim is to create a legal basis which would be generally applicable in every country, based on the autonomy of legal parties. Instead of legal analysis in every country the applicant plans to make only general consultation with lawyers and communities regarding selected states representing specific jurisdictions. The aim is to prepare simple, user-friendly and legal-friendly proposal, which would create a basis for contractual relationship necessary for participation on the TESTAMENTU archive.”

• Not innovative, I've heard about similar projects before but they weren't successful

Although some projects may have tried and failed - in this we will be innovative - we will try and not fail! :) On a more serious note - as you've mentioned, such projects were not successful (I do not know why, as I do not know of any of them). So if our project will “survive”, it will be the only one in this field! And in this case we can call it innovative I guess?

I remember when Google has started - they received lot of similar critics/comments: “you plan to make something, others already do (and for longer)” Their respond: “we will make it much better” - and they did! So in our case - yes, if somebody tried before us and failed, we will try and not fail!

• The team possesses the ability to execute the project and the budget is realistic at the first glance. The project duration (9 months) maybe realistic as well.

Thank you for trusting us! Yes, we planned the budget and duration based on our experience from other online projects - of similar size and also much bigger ones.

• No legal understanding, 50% of budget is aimed on the feasibility study

We decided to go to this project only after consultation with professional lawyer - even the most appropriate in Slovakia - JUDr. Zuzana Adamová, PhD. Before this consultation, we ourselves were in doubt about feasibility, but she blew our worries away clarifying the feasibility of the project. See her comment about the topic.

There is an important distinction to make here as half of the budget is reserved for all the work of lawyers, which is not restrained to the feasibility study. In the 1st phase of the project (Lawyer analysis) there will be a feasibility study and the dedication document itself created. In the 4th phase (Polish) there is a possibility for some adjustments to the documents. All of the above highlights the lawyer's work, much more than only feasibility study.

The issue about the budget for the lawyers: We're not happy to be paying the lawyers so much either… sadly, we live in a world of words, laws and interpretations and making sure all legal requirements lineup is costly. This is one of the primary reasons, why we want to create (and spread the use) this project! Allowing the users to skip the, often off-putting, legal jargon knowing all the necessary steps have been taken care of within the robust system.

This is an investment, with Testamentu people will not need lawyers… and will have the possibility to liberate their works on their own. And other people - wikimedians - will have the option of listing through the liberated authors / works (in the future maybe even their content itself) for direct use in Wikimedia projects and beyond. Thanks to the project we can take one more important step in the direction of a truly free (as in “free speech” and also “free beer”) knowledge!

• I have serious doubts about the feasibility and sustainability of this project but I am willing to support a scaled down version of it, basically a feasibility study. The main goal of such a study should be to establish through consultations with lawyers and communities that the such a website is feasible and create its basic design.

Yes, even a “scaled down version”, a “feasibility study”, is possible. However, the feasibility study itself would be as to make only first/one step during a marathon. The first step is fundamental, but for sure not enough to achieve the aim - at least if we really want to change the current “status quo”.

But the project plan already follows the path you have proposed. We may agree about mid-term evaluation of the feasibility study and the first design. Based on that evaluation, WMF would decide whether to continue or not. As our consultations showed, we are confident about positive result of such evaluation - but if that will help to diminish your doubts we can do it such way.

About the sustainability see our comment above.

Thanks for the possibility for our additional comments! We would appreciate also your responds for our questions in order to respond to more your comments in relevant way. On behalf of Testamentu team, KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 17:11, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

And another our respond (thanks for the additional clarification!).

• If more attention were given to a CC-like rollout, I would definitely endorse.

We are aware of the importance of PR activities for this project, as we are aware of the need to be visible at the right time with adequate build up and concise work put into it beforehand, taking steps towards a widespread awareness and interest in use being present at launch. Even more so, as we need to attract the active participation from the “donors”, liberating their works.

Marketing, PR and spreading the word will be done through the channels we have thanks to projects we’ve established, collaborations that have taken place in the course of history of the NGO, acquaintances in circles related to licensing and its use, social media and as the list goes on here’s several concrete examples:

• Last year our NGO organized the first language festival in Slovakia: LingvaFest. Official media partner was the main state Slovak radio, and except of them there were many other partners. Thanks to this we achieved big visibility of the festival. See all the collected links, mentions: http://www.lingvafest.sk/lingvafest-v-mediach/
• We organize the biggest polyglot meeting in the world: Polyglot Gathering - we collect the appearance in media on site: https://www.polyglotbratislava.com/2018/after-the-gathering/
• We plan to collaborate with the Pirate party in Germany and the Czech Republic (as we have personal contacts there) on the publicity and PR activities for this project.
• We cooperate with the Slovak Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture (also on our other online and offline projects) - they will be good multipliers for this project as well.
• We plan to reach Tech-influencers and bloggers, IT-news media, culture-media etc.
• Thanks to our Esperanto-activities we have good coverage all over the world - hence Esperantists will be a medium through which we can spread information about the project in many places all around the globe.
• Of course we will be happy to receive some PR-help from the Wikimedia community as well. (as this is the community, whose aims are closest to our project, we can imagine, a lot of wikipedians would be interested in the project and would be ready to help with our informational campaign for it).

On behalf of Testamentu team, KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 20:25, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Questions for the Committee

Hi I JethroBT (WMF) and the Committee! Thanks for your comments, despite not being very happy.

Before we provide our comments, we would like to make sure we understand you well. Could you please respond these questions?

• "This builds on work in OTRS and Creative Commons. I would like to see a marketing effort like CC has for what they propose."
  • Building on work in OTRS and CC: Our tool has some similar elements and to some extent the scope as OTRS and CC (Chooser). But I am not really sure what you mean by it.
  • Marketing efforts: We definitively may take inspiration. Can you please elaborate what is most important for you in such marketing campaign you are proposing?
• "The project is highly innovative in sense that it purports to solve the problem of centralized storage of free licenses. [...]"
  • What do you mean by "storage of free licenses"?
• "If more attention were given to a CC-like rollout, I would definitely endorse."
  • Do you mean CC licenses or the organisation(s?) behind them? There was 2 quite distinctive paths of rollout of CC licenses: up to v3 (adaptation) and for v4 (translation). Or, in other words, what do you mean by "CC-like rollout"?
• "Unlikely to be executed [...]"
  • On which premise do you assume that the project is unlikely to be executed?

Thanks in advance for your responds! We are going to post our comments soon after we better understand you points of view. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 20:37, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

@KuboF Hromoslav: One response from a committee member to the question regarding the CC-like rollout:

I think my comment was "If more attention were given to a CC-like rollout, I would definitely endorse." and it looks like someone else had a similar comment. I only meant that when CC was presented it made a big splash, had lots of easy-to-use tools readily available and was rapidly picked up (or support for CC was announced simultaneously).

Having a rollout like that takes lots of up-front work. I like the idea, but there doesn't seem to be enough attention given to the nuts-and-bolts of how it would be adopted.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Alex, for letting us know, even as the message is not very happy. We will take the comments to define our next steps. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 18:58, 5 March 2019 (UTC)