[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Nikola Smolenski]

On Thursday 22 January 2009 02:31:54 Sam Johnston wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:07 AM, Thomas Dalton 
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:
> > > "Das Wikipedia Lexikon in einem Band"[1] is another stunning example of
> > > attribution gone mad
> >
> > A few pages of names in a 1000 page book doesn't seem that mad to me.
> > I think it makes an excellent point about how Wikipedia works.
>
> Perhaps, but it delivers ZERO benefit to the pseudonymous individuals

I do not edit pseudonymously, and even if I would, I know it would deliver a 
non-zero benefit to me.

> listed and exacts a non-trivial toll on the reuser. This is further

Compared with all the other work that goes into typesetting and printing a 
book, it is indeed trivial. A list of all authors of an article could be 
easily extracted from a copy of the Wikipedia database with a single SQL 
query.

> amplified for partial reuse of a resource, reuse of multiple resources,
> reuse with tangible mediums (esp non-print e.g. t-shirts) and so on.

The attribution should be reasonable to the medium. I don't expect to have 
such a list of authors if a portion of a Wikipedia article is printed on a 
cup. I expect it if entire article is printed in a book.

> Carrying on with the France example[1], you can double the length of that
> list with IP numbers (which would likely have to be included too) and

Why would IP numbers have to be included?

> consider that if the article has accrued 5,000 contributors over the last 5
> years or so, how many will it have in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

I think that France is an extreme example, and that most articles have far 
fewer authors. I can't check for English, but an average article on Serbian 
Wikipedia has 10 authors, and on German Wikipedia 5 authors.