On 6/29/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
I invite you to ask more questions here as well as on
the appropriate
candidate talk page if you feel it necessarily.
Well, in my reasoning I thought I was fairly clear that a lot of my
motivation was not based on a dislike of any of the candidates, but
more because two years is too long and because the editors, myself
included, are not being given quite enough information about
longer-term issues. I don't think 'questions' are a good solution to
the lack of information in the statements because we can not expect a
large enough audience to read the discussion.
But since I'm being invited to ask questions, I'd like to ask a
question of all of the candidates; please pardon its length. Perhaps
this is more directed at Angela, since she mentioned the GFDL in her
statement, but I'd like to hear comments from all.
What is your long-term position with respect to the GFDL, particularly
with respect to attribution? Specifically, I've read the new CC-wiki
license and I'm very concerned that it creates a special right for
site operators (as opposed to first editors or publishers). The
requirements of the CC-wiki are fairly similar to the not quite
GFDL-compatible attribution suggestions we make on our licensing page,
which is a big reason why I would even mention CC-wiki when talking
about Wikipedia licensing.
Obviously Wikipedia could never be licensed as CC-wiki, and I have
great faith that the Free Software Foundation would not make unwise
changes to later versions of the GFDL... but I think that we would all
benefit from finding out exactly what changes the board would request
on our behalf.
I feel confident that the community will not tolerate a change to the
licensing which grants Wikimedia special legal rights which would
inhibit the ability of the community to fork should the board somehow
lose its mind and act against what the community feels is its best
interest. This would require that the license not provide a special
attribution loophole that allows only attributing to the site where
the material was originally created. I would like a direct assurance
that the board members will make no attempt to achieve such a change
for GFDL-licensed content on Wikipedia, Commons, or Wikibooks.
I'd also like to know how each board member thinks the board to
incorporate community input into licensing-related discussions. I
believe that most people would agree that the use of our content could
be enhanced by some degree of carefully thought out change, but I know
I'd like to have the ability to provide input; for example, my point
on the non-negotiability of the legal ease of forking.
Thanks!