[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Mike Godwin]

Anthony writes:

> Well, first off, I wasn't referring to free licenses, I was  
> referring to
> rights.

This is a telling admission. I respect anyone's desire to have rights  
over the copyrighted material he or she generates. That's a function  
of traditional copyright law and it informs the traditional regime of  
"all rights reserved".  But if you don't give primacy to the mission  
of spreading free knowledge to the world -- the function of free  
licenses! --  including your edits of other people's contributions,  
perhaps you are involved in the wrong project?

> That said, the GFDL requires authors to be listed in "the section  
> entitled
> History", and it clearly states that a "section "Entitled XYZ" means  
> a named
> subunit of the Document..."

So is current Wikipedia practice consistent with the GFDL or not?   
Obviously, the History page reachable from a Wikipedia article could  
be interpreted as not being a "section" or a "named subunit."   
Historically, the community has generally interpreted this attribution  
requirement of the GFDL as allowing for a link to a History page.  In  
this respect, there is no essential difference between GFDL and CC-BY- 
SA 3.x.

If there is no essential difference, then your concern about getting  
credit is a wash, regardless of whether the license on Wikipedia is  
updated.

This doesn't mean your concern is any less valid or invalid -- it just  
means that there's nothing inherent in the question of updating the  
license that should trigger it.


--Mike