[Foundation-l] Using content from Wikipedia

Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax at gmail.com
Sun Oct 8 05:38:24 UTC 2006


Yorian wrote:
> Hey everyone, I have a question I'd like to ask:
> 
> I have an idea for a (hopefully profitable) website, and I'd like to
> use content from Wikipedia for it. About half of the content from the
>  website will be from Wikipedia. Of course I will mention Wikipedia
> as a source and I will donate some of my profits to Wikimedia, but is
> it okay to have other content on an individual webpage, besides the 
> Wikipedia-content, that is not GFDL-licensed? The GFDL is not very
> clear on that, and people on the Dutch and English Wikipedia couldn't
> answer this question. Is there anyone who knows this? I'm afraid I
> can't afford a lawyer :( Thanks in advance!
> 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACopyrights#Reusers.27_rights_and_obligations

> If you want to use Wikipedia materials in your own books/articles/web
> sites or other publications, you can do so, but you have to follow
> the GFDL. If you are simply duplicating the Wikipedia article, you
> must follow section two of the GFDL on verbatim copying, as discussed
> at Wikipedia:Verbatim copying.
> 
> If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content,
> this entails the following:
> 
> * your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
> * you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B),
> and
> * you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the material 
> (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wikipedia article is any 
> of a number of formats available from us, including the wiki text, 
> the html web pages, xml feed, etc.)
> 
> You may be able to partially fulfill the latter two obligations by
> providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Wikipedia article
> hosted on this website. You also need to provide access to a
> transparent copy of the new text. However, please note that the
> Wikimedia Foundation makes no guarantee to retain authorship
> information and a transparent copy of articles. Therefore, you are
> encouraged to provide this authorship information and a transparent
> copy with your derived works.

Hope that helps,
-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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