[Textbook-l] legal counsel on copyright issues

[Daniel Mayer]

Toby wrote:
>....
>Encyclopaedias and textbooks have a quite 
>different style, and I'd argue that any text that 
>isn't completely rewritten is a mistake.
>...
 
The difference in style is primarily organizational and related to focus. That 
means that a great many sections of Wikipedia articles can used in a 
textbook. To abandon the GFDL and thus ignore the largest open content text 
resource in the world is a grave mistake. 

I've already mentioned /several/ times now that our long-term goal should be 
to work with the writers of the various copyleft viral licenses to make them 
compatible with each other whereever possible. For example, all that would be 
needed from the GNU and Creative Common people to make their respective 
copyleft viral licenses compatible would be for both of them to make new 
versions that explicitly state that text from the other corresponding 
copyleft viral license is compatible. That would make it possible for GNU FDL 
text to be incorporated into Creative Commons Share Alike text and vice 
versa. 

Until then we are stuck with the GNU FDL (and I have yet to see a compelling 
argument to abandon that). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)