Wisdom Project wrote:
[snip]
"All these projects are based on wiki technology:
they are open
knowledge bases which can be improved by anyone. This is the homepage
of the underlying open source wiki engine, MediaWiki, which is
developed here on SourceForge via CVS, and is available under the GNU
General Public License (the contents of the Wikimedia wikis themselves
are licensed under the GNU FDL). "
I was wondering if anyone can clarify the last line of this page. Is
it saying that any content created on any installation of the
Wikimedia software is automatically licensed under the GNU FDL?
There is no such thing as 'Wikimedia software'.
MediaWiki is the software which runs the wikis. It imposes no
restrictions whatsoever on the licensing of stuff you write in your wiki
(but may be configured to display a notice about the licensing you have
decided to put on your content).
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is the non-profit corporation which
operates Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikiquote. These projects
have all been established with content licensed under the GNU Free
Documentation License, and if you submit materials *to those projects*
you must license your material in accordance with that.
Specifically, if I wanted to install and use Wikimedia
software
privately to write a book or whatever, is that content immediately
licensed by the GNU FDL or am I free to copyright content on a private
installation however I wish?
You are free to copyright content on a private installation however you
wish.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)