Dear comrads,
On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 2:55 AM, mike.lifeguard
<mike.lifeguard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm wondering how we reconcile situations like
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Uim and
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scratch/Content_License
These are GFDL plus PD and CC-by-sa respectively. But we have no indication
whatsoever that contributors to the book (except Swift and Rob respectively)
have agreed to this arrangement.
Visiting any page at Wikibooks and hitting the "Edit this page" tab at
the top of the page, one is taken to a page with a form containing the
Mediawiki markup for the page one has chosen to edit. At the bottom of
that page is a clause that includes:
Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released
under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (see Wikibooks:Copyrights
for details).
At the top of the "Uim" book main page there is a clause that states that
This wikibook is in the public domain. Any changes to its Wikibooks copy will
be assumed to be released into the public domain.
One could argue that we have little more of an idea whether
contributors have agreed to the former, than the latter.
I can find two possible problems with this. Firstly, there is the
inconsistency that the edit page clause doesn't mention the
possibility of dual licensing. On the other hand, the clause doesn't
say that the content is considered to be released under the GFDL, *and
that license only*. Ambiguous but not mutually exclusive.
Secondly, the PD clause isn't on the edit page itself, and that on the
book sub-pages, the license is linked to, rather than quoted in full.
That is, of course, only a valid point as long as Wikibooks is
required to obtain users' consent of the license in a particular way.
If such a requirement does exist, and states that the clause must be
placed on the edit page itself, then I think we can quite easily
reconcile this situation by modifying the current clause to mention
the possibility of other licensing.
If no such requirement exists, I would say that the Uim book makes an
honest and sufficient attempt to inform contributors of the PD
licence.
The edit page clause links to
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights>
From that page:
"All contributions to
Wikibooks are the property of the submitter
unless otherwise noted"
and
"All content is considered to be released under the following terms
unless otherwise indicated"
I believe these sufficiently enable the development of
more-free-than-GFDL books.
It seems to me that the requirements to inform the user of the
Wikibook licensing have been met. I would be very happy to work with
other interested parties on clarifying the area of dual licensing.
Sincerely,
Martin Swift
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Swift
PS.
I really have to wonder who thought there was not a
problem with this
situation - Swift apparently asked around and got an affirmative; I'm
surprised with Rob as well.
I believe that after receiving no reply on the
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights>
page I took the issue to the old Staff Lounge along with the question
whether the original research clause made the book unacceptable for
Wikibooks. It would have been shortly before I started work on the Uim
book (24 December 2006).
I'm surprised that you would think it necessary to delete content that
was possibly posted also under a more free a license than GFDL. At
worst, the contributions default to GFDL.