cultural-freedom-policy

Cultural Freedom Policy

Purpose

A central goal of the AUT Computer Science Club (CSC) is to encourage and perpetuate learning, and share knowledge, without the restrictions of societal inequality. This Cultural Freedom Policy (CFP) exists to ensure that any cultural works produced as part of club activies are made available under policies that permit sharing, modification, and redistribution, and do not place undue technical or financial restrictions upon those who wish to do any of the above.

This document outlines key terms, as well as the expectations for any cultural contributions in our community.

Freedom-respecting culture

Cultural works (including software) are freedom-respecting if they grant all those who wish them the following four rights:

1. The right to use the work and enjoy its benefits;
2. The right to study the work and apply knowledge acquired from it;
3. The right to make and redistribute copies, of the whole work or any part of it; and
4. The right to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works.

It is important that freedom-respecting works provide, practically and without any risk, all of the above rights. However, if authors of works of culture do not take action, their works are covered by existing copyright laws, which severely limit what others can and cannot do.

To ensure that works are freedom-respecting, an author should select a license for the work: choosing to do so does not mean that the author loses all their rights, but does guarantee that everyone has the freedoms listed above. Unless a cultural work has a license that guarantees these rights (a freedom-respecting license from here on), the work cannot be considered freedom-respecting. A list of such licenses is available.

An alternative term for freedom-respecting works (typically used for software) is open-source. While the criteria in this case are near-identical, we prefer the term 'freedom-respecting', as it phrases the benefits of this aproach in non-technical, universal and humanitarian terms. While any work defined as open-source is by definition also freedom-respecting, this CFP will use the latter term for the reasons given above.

Edit-friendly culture

Cultural works (including software) are edit-friendly if they are:

1. In an open format.
2. Can be edited by at least one open-source application.
3. Are in a preferred source form for editing (that is, are stored in the way that permits others to do as much as possible with them).
4. Stored in a public location without undue access restrictions.

Our policy

All cultural works that are used as part of club activities must be released as freedom-respecting culture. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Presentation slides for any talk or presentation given during club events
• Software that is demonstrated as part of club events
• Artwork or logos used for club business or activities
• Club promotional materials

This requirement also requires that the works be clearly labelled with a freedom-respecting license. Additionally, where possible, all such works should also be edit-friendly.

The above requirements prohibit any sort of Digital Restrictions Management (also known as DRM) being embedded in any such work.

Scope

We expect all community participants (members, sponsors and other guests) to abide by this CFP.

Compliance

Compliance with this CFP is a pre-requisite for the use of club time or resources for an activity. Lack of complicance with this CFP will mean that your activity or event cannot proceed.

Additional resources

To assist community participants with the requirements of this CFP, we provide the following additional resources:

• A list of open formats
• A list of freedom-respecting licenses
• The associated TOOLS.md file, listing tools suitable for creating a range of cultural works, along with some 'anti-suggestions' and the reasoning behind them
• A public repository on NotABug.org as a public place to commit their works

Any community participant can request push rights for a repository in the organization: to do this, please contact a member of the organizational committee.

Contact information

Any further inquiries or concerns should be raised with the CSC organizing committee. Currently, its members are:

• Glen Osborne wjm2022@autuni.ac.nz
• Koz Ross koz.ross@retro-freedom.nz
• Yuan Yuan Yuan.Yuan@live.hk