[Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2009/3/11 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>:
>   
>> 3. If the intent is to maintain a stipulation that conforming
>> to the license can be done by satisfying a significantly
>> lower threshold than supplying the authors, but since we
>> are doing that "more onerous route", every other sad site
>> should do the same; well I simply disagree, and that
>> phrasing merely reads petulant and doesn't even get the
>> point across.
>>     
>
> I'm not sure we're understanding each other, still.
>
> The point of the provision is to ensure that attribution by link
> always happens by linking to a copy that actually gives authorship
> information. In most cases that will be our website, but the
> attribution requirements should allow for independent mirrors and
> forks.
>
> I've reworded it slightly:
> "b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable
> online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the
> license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner
> equivalent to the credit given on this website"
>   

First, allow me to apologize if my first reply was a bit
flip and perhaps not useful in tracking down where
our source of differing viewpoint lies.

Any Wikimedia hosting website will never be a "copy"
in the sense of you being able to link to it to satisfy
the intent of the CC-BY-SA license. (Much as a library
is not a book.) And if it were a possibility to mislead
our reusers to think that were actually the case, that
would be a very bad thing indeed.

The only thing *on* wikimedia websites that does
satisfy that currently is the history of articles; a direct
link into the history is sadly the only option available. I
think it is way cool that people are thinking of innovative
ways of formatting that information (in ways that would
for instance cut out the often inflammatory edit summaries),
but that is for the future.

It would be astonishingly brash to expect that content
that is CC-BY-SA would in most cases be attributed to
their rightful authors via our site. I am frankly surprised
you even raise the notion. Share Alike means that
Wikimedia isn't privileged in any shape or form in the
chain of copyleft. If I can ask of anything, I ask you
please not to try to break that chain.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen