[Foundation-l] Commons Usurp issue

[geni]

2008/6/4 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 6:19 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2008/6/4 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
>>> I don't think we've ever interpreted the GFDL in the sense that the
>>> author credits have to be invariant.  Just accurate enough and
>>> traceable enough.  The GFDL doesn't require an absolute here...
>>>
>>> I believe that you're inventing a problem where none exists...
>>
>> It requires invariant.  The GFDL is full of invariant sections both
>> accidental and deliberate. "Preserve the section Entitled "History""
>> "Preserve all the copyright notices " I really don't see a court going
>> for accepting the license meant accurate enough to be traceable.
>>
>> But you are right no problem exists. If you want one name across all
>> projects just pick a unique name.
>
> What it actually says:
> # B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
> entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the
> Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors
> of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than
> five), unless they release you from this requirement.
> ...
> # I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and
> add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
> publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there
> is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating
> the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on
> its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
> stated in the previous sentence.
>
>
> We don't exactly follow the as-written rule there because we can't -
> the history page for an article is not a Title Page or a section
> entitled "History", as it's a live wiki and not a paper document.

Yes there is. They are both the history section.


> Further, the "Preserve" doesn't say "Invariantly preserve", which
> other things do explicitly.


"Invariantly preserve" does not appear at any point in the GFDL.



> Usurpation is a special case of user account name changes.  A
> voluntary name change violates the explicit interpretation you're
> arguing of the license, too.  We allow those...

No. We can argue that the person is re-releasing all their content
under a second name. The GFDL has no problems with this.

> If an usurped account owner complains, along these lines, our
> counterargument is "We still list (your account / identity) in the
> article history, though we've changed the displayed text string for
> it.  That's all we do for anyone, ever."

Nice try but the GFDL isn't interested in account / identities just
the text string.

> In the enwiki BNB discussion Robert Rhode pointed to, see the
> following statement by Carl, which sums up what I think about this:
>
> "As to whether it breaks GFDL to change someone's name, I think we can
> fall back on the argument that when someone contributes to they
> implicitly grant us permission to change things for the purpose of
> administering the site (this is also the reason, I believe, that we
> don't worry about other minor GFDL issues such as accidentally lost
> attribution, etc.). If you feel renaming users against their will is
> an issue, it would be more compelling to everyone if you could
> convince Mike Godwin to comment on it, especially since other projects
> appear to do so, and so if it's a GFDL violation they need to change
> their practices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)"

I can't see the courts accepting it is necessary to mess with
attribution to administer the site.

> The community should not be making trouble for ourselves by trying to
> worst-case interpret corner cases of the GFDL restrictions.

I'm not. The worse case stuff is far worse.

>  We've had
> to interpret in a pragmantic manner.  If there's a problem, bring it
> to Mike, who can talk to the FSF folks or just interpret on his own
> and let us know if there is legitimately a problem or if we're just
> stressing ourselves out for the fun of it.

The pragmatic approach is that if you want to use a user name across
all sites is to chose something unique. If you want to argue that we
can get away with something fairly clearly against the GFDL I would
suggest it is incumbent on you to get support from the FSF or mike.


-- 
geni