Yes, a LFDL would be a good idea, in my opinion (though this is just my opinion as a Wikipedia volunteer contributor (as are all my public posts, pages, etc) and not as a licensed lawyer). As previously stated it is not a legal opinion unless there is an attorney client relationship, and as the Wikipedia community is a voluntary association of individuals I cannot imagine how I could give such a group a legal opinion.
Little Dan and I had a discussion about a similar subject on my talk page a month ago; we were also thinking that a limited successor license could apply retroactively only to Wikimedia so that the vagarities surrounding the implied Wikipedia license could be acknowledged and such a successor license would be general enough to allow for that expansive kind of licensing that is the spirit behind all copyleft type licensing schemes without requiring an absolute grant of copyright to Wikimedia (which is hard to do for the 150,000 so existing articles, not to mention the other name spaces) which is what FSF recommends for its software code.
I am concerned also that the distinction between the non-exclusive licence grant to Wikipedia; when one makes a contribution it is not the same as the GFDL. Is it? For example, if someone takes text from one page and uses it (with or without edits) on another page, if it was under GFDL there would be a violation because if the original copyright owner releases it to Wikipedia under GFDL then when someone moves content from one Wikipedia page (or between name spaces) then all the attribution information that is implied in history pages would also have to be moved. I have never found any discussion about this anywhere. Souldn't thisambiguity also be considered when adopting a successor license with the permission of FSF? If all contributors explicitly acknowledge that they have given a non-exclusive license then this material can be reorganized (and it would make Wikipedia 1.0 on paper a lot easier as all the attributions would not have to be included there) and allow for liberal use of Wikimedia materials in any spin-off project (and allow for direct translations between languages). Alex756
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" textbook-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:12 PM Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing
What might work out for everyone would be the creation of an 'LFDL', for "Lesser FDL", similar in spirit and motivation to the "LGPL". And Stallman can recommend that people not use it, while simulteneously acknowledging that it can be useful in some contexts.