The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-02
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The discussion about the licensing of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia
has been going on for a few days now, and we can now see better which
questions are contentious, and which ones seem to have found an early
consensus.
In order to keep the discussion moving, we plan to restructure it.
We have identified the following points as having achieved a rough
consensus.
1.
Everything is published under a free license.
2.
We are launching with only a single license for implementations. We
*may* add the option to have other compatible open source licenses for
software contributions after launch. This is a discussion for a later point.
3.
Textual content on Wikifunctions (i.e. documentations, project pages,
talk pages, etc.) is all published under CC BY-SA. For the sake of
consistency, we will use the 3.0 version of the CC BY-SA license at this
point.
4.
Function Signatures and other structured objects (besides Abstract
Content and Code Implementations) are published under CC0.
5.
Output Content has the same license as the input to the functions
producing the Output Content. This means in particular that Output Content
used for Wikipedia will be published under the same license as the license
we choose for Open Question #2 above.
We have identified the following two questions as being the core unresolved
questions:
1.
Which license should be used for code implementations: GPL or Apache?
2.
Which license should be used for Abstract Content for Abstract
Wikipedia: CC BY-SA or CC 0?
I doubt that we will be able to achieve consensus on the two open
questions, as they touch on a very long-running open question whether or
not licenses for free content and open source should better be viral. We
don’t expect, nor do we really want to moderate a discussion that has
happened repeatedly in the last few decades, and that likely will not lead
to many people changing their opinion anyway.
You are still free and welcome to add reasonings and to discuss on the talk
page, but we would particularly like to see the vote from a large number of
people on which of the two options you’d prefer, and also whether you
actually care or not, as long as the content is free.
This will help us to find a decision that is aligned with the community.
To make it explicit: in case of a close outcome, we reserve the right to
not necessarily follow whichever option has more comments/!votes.
Our plan is to summarize the conversation around December 15, in about two
weeks' time, and then leave that for final comments and reactions, before
we close the discussion on December 20.
Please join the discussion and give your !vote on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia/Licensing_discussion>
.
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We have launched the Design hub
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Design>, which we will
steadily expand in the coming months. It will include a variety of
meeting-notes, design sketches and mockups, and reference material links
that are created as part of the Design process for the user interface of
Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia.
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We have uploaded the finalized logo assets for the Wikifunctions logo. You
can find the assets, including a vectorized version, favicons, etc., all on
Wikimedia Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikifunctions_logos>.
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Some of you already noticed that we have started working on setting up our
beta cluster wiki. It is not ready for prime time yet, and we will announce
it here as soon as this changes. This is also when we will post the link.
For now, we hope you don’t mind keeping the link a bit hidden, as the site
isn’t working properly yet.