Dear comrads,
On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 2:55 AM, mike.lifeguard mike.lifeguard@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.