[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> I understand that viewpoint and think it is reasonable.  How about adding a
> checkbox to preferences, that says "allow attribution by URL"?

Insofar as this satisfies my personal preference on the matter, I say
that this is fine. If we added this checkbox to the software now there
would be, of course, an argument about whether the box should be
checked by default or not. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of
user accounts are now abandoned, whatever we set for the default value
of this box would become the de facto standard for attribution anyway.

> I think it's clear that at least some people expected to be attributed
> directly in any print edition encyclopedias made from Wikipedia.  Do you
> deny that, or do you just think it doesn't matter?

I don't deny it, but I am curious to see some evidence that this
preference has indeed been made clear by some of our editors. I can't
say that I've ever seen somebody express such a preference on
Wikibooks, but then again we have a smaller community and are
relatively insulated from discussions like this. To that effect, since
people haven't clearly expressed this situation on Wikibooks, I think
we could end up in a situation where different projects could handle
their attribution requirements differently. The situation over there
is sufficiently different for a number of reasons that it's probably
not a good parallel anyway.

--Andrew Whitworth