Sanford Forte wrote:
If a school district, or a private printer, want to satisfy the general frameworks required by a specific state, *all* of the material should be able to clear, *without* hassles.
How is mixing and matching incompatible licenses in the same book making things easier? All this does is make it a bigger hassle for the school districts; now instead of adhering to the terms of one license, they have to adhere to the terms of more than one and possibly many.
For maximum impact, *every* basic curriculum taken on by WP should have *all* materials available as non-GNU-limited...even if that means starting from scratch with some modules for which there is already GNU-limited content available.
What is so limiting about the GNU FDL? It was specifically written for textbooks and manuals.
I can just see a sales representative form Prentice Hall (all the way up to the CEO of that company's textbook division) wining and dining textbook committee people from various states and bringing stuff like this up just before srucial votes are cast to accept or not accept certain books for district consideration.
And they would not do the same for any other copyleft textbook?
Also, I can see the 'copyright police', prompted by commercial publishers, trying to intimidate privae and home schools into doing certain things with GNU-limited material. This industry knows how to use 'dirty'tricks to get its way.
Since the text is free, then how are they going to do that? We already plan to work with the GNU people to fix the parts of the license we don't like.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
[To judge from the Reply-To: header, mave wants replies to his personal email. So this is going both to <textbook-L> and directly to mav.]
Maveric149 wrote in part:
What is so limiting about the GNU FDL? It was specifically written for textbooks and manuals.
It has parts that we don't like, of course. You shouldn't have to repeat your points 50 times, but we shouldn't have to repeat ours 50 times either.
We already plan to work with the GNU people to fix the parts of the license we don't like.
Having read more RMS philosophy, I'm now prepared to reply to this: Dream on. It would be great to fix the GNU FDL, but it'll never happen; RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity.
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
Having read more RMS philosophy, I'm now prepared to reply to this: Dream on. It would be great to fix the GNU FDL, but it'll never happen; RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity.
Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Having read more RMS philosophy, I'm now prepared to reply to this: Dream on. It would be great to fix the GNU FDL, but it'll never happen; RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity.
Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?
I'm relying mostly on discussions in the Debian legal list, so use this Google URL (really long!): http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=invariant+sections&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=lists.debian.org&safe=images to find threads to look at and search for Stallman as author.
More specifically, see this thread: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/threads.html#00240 and look at the posts written by Richard Stallman.
Here is a short one that sums up the basic reason: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00546.html which is that RMS wants documentation written by the GNU Project to always contain his philosophical essays on the need for free software. Even if some proprietary jerk (^_^) edits the documentation later on, still they can't remove his essays! (But they /can/ add their own.)
The best evidence that he won't budge is that this argument with certain principal Debian players has been going on a long time, and they really want the FDL to change. Throughout the long debates, RMS hasn't budged an inch. That's why I don't think that we would do any better.
Of course, we're not so much asking for the Invariant Sections to go as we are asking for the GNU FDL to allow relicensing under CC BY-SA. But CC BY-SA doesn't recognise Invariant Sections, so that would allow the Invariant Sections to be removed in two steps. RMS would see that in a second, as I'm sure you'll agree!
BTW, if in these discussions you see talk of "license incompatibility", note that this is incompatibility between the FDL and the GPL, not incompatibility with other free text licences like the CC licences. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200306/threads.html#00138 has more on this, but it doesn't really address non-GNU licences.
Incidentally, I've given a recent reference, but Debian (or certain Debian people) and RMS have been arguing about this for some time now: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200111/threads.html#00006 is an early debate.
-- Toby
Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?
I'm relying mostly on discussions in the Debian legal list,
(thanks, I'm still reading all this)
The best evidence that he won't budge is that this argument with certain principal Debian players has been going on a long time, and they really want the FDL to change. Throughout the long debates, RMS hasn't budged an inch. That's why I don't think that we would do any better.
Or perhaps we can offer a way out of this mess to all parties, based on this:
In http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00582.html RMS wrote,
Incompatibility of licenses is a significant practical inconvenience, and we have sometimes made changes for the sake of compatibility, but mere inconvenience doesn't make a license non-free.
As far as I'm concerned *our* beef with the GNU FDL is not about invariant sections per se, but about license incompatibility. We'd like for people to be able to cut and paste text back and forth with relative easy from documents under GNU FDL and CC Attribution-Share Alike.
Our other complaint is about the *complexity* of the license, which is long and tedious and clearly written from a perspective of a 'manual' or 'documentation'. Elsewhere, Stallman points out that the invariant section 'problem' wouldn't resolve the 'length of license' problem, since it's 8 pages, and the invariant section stuff is a lot shorter.
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.
I think a big selling point is that while free software is now well-established and not a radical concept, free texts like Wikipedia are still relatively new and unheard of, outside of free software documentation, and that this budding movement has different needs that need to be addressed if the idea of freedom is to grow in this arena.
In code, cutting and pasting and creating a derivative work out of the middle of one program into the middle of another program isn't often very useful. Each program has it's own variable names, structure, requirements. Code re-use is possible, but is usually accomplished with dynamic or static linking.
In our case, the case of text, that kind of cutting and pasting is central to what we do. A person writing an article about Iraq may wish to very quickly and effectively adapt a CC BY-SA licensed work by adding a few paragraphs of lightly edited Wikipedia background information.
So license incompatibility is a growing problem for us.
Of course, we're not so much asking for the Invariant Sections to go as we are asking for the GNU FDL to allow relicensing under CC BY-SA. But CC BY-SA doesn't recognise Invariant Sections, so that would allow the Invariant Sections to be removed in two steps. RMS would see that in a second, as I'm sure you'll agree!
Yes, but there's a solution to that, at least I think so.
Anything released under FDL 1.x or 2.0 with no invariant sections, no Front-Cover texts, and no Back-Cover texts can be distributed under the terms of LFDL 2.0 *or* FDL 2.0. Anything release under FDL 1.x with invariant sections can be released under FDL 2.0.
And then LFDL can be simpler and worded carefully so as to maximize compatibility with CC SA.
A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would allow for relicensing under LFDL.
--Jimbo
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.
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:
In http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00582.html RMS wrote,
Incompatibility of licenses is a significant practical inconvenience, and we have sometimes made changes for the sake of compatibility, but mere inconvenience doesn't make a license non-free.
To provide context, this discussion is about incompatibility between the various GNU licences (FDL and GPL). Of course, we don't have to mention that when we quote it back to him and say �Isn't intercompatibility with non-GNU copyleft licences a good idea?�. ^_^
As far as I'm concerned *our* beef with the GNU FDL is not about invariant sections per se, but about license incompatibility. We'd like for people to be able to cut and paste text back and forth with relative easy from documents under GNU FDL and CC Attribution-Share Alike.
Agreed. I don't like the IS (and related) features of the GNU FDL, but they're not the big deal.
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.
I like this idea, and your reasons for it. Now who can sell it to RMS? Of course, we need GNU -- we can't just write it ourselves -- for this reason:
Anything released under FDL 1.x or 2.0 with no invariant sections, no Front-Cover texts, and no Back-Cover texts can be distributed under the terms of LFDL 2.0 *or* FDL 2.0. Anything release under FDL 1.x with invariant sections can be released under FDL 2.0.
I can't say that I've read anything from RMS suggesting that he would never agree to this. I don't suppose that he'll like it at first, but we do have our reasons. It's not like he's an obstinate, stubborn ideologue -- rather a thoughtful, open-minded ideologue. ^_^
A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would allow for relicensing under LFDL.
I really don't know anything about CC's Lawrence Lessig. Given the internecine political battles between "free" and "open", does anybody know how RMS and Lessig feel about each other? (I mean in particular �I trust this organisation to do good licences, at least to whatever degree is necessary for the LFDL to work in the end.�.) I know that Lessig wrote the foreword to RMS's collected essays; but OTOH, Lessig says "open" rather than "free" now.
-- Toby
Op za 23-08-2003, om 15:02 schreef Toby Bartels:
I really don't know anything about CC's Lawrence Lessig. Given the internecine political battles between "free" and "open", does anybody know how RMS and Lessig feel about each other?
The difference between free software and open source is that open source emphasizes the access to source code, and not the rights you are given in the license.
This is what Raymond writes in the OSI Faq: http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/faq.php "Are you guys opposed to intellectual property rights?" "The Open Source Initiative does not have a position on whether ideas can be owned, whether patents are good or bad, or any of the related controversies. We think the economic self-interest arguments for open source are strong enough that nobody needs to go on any moral crusades about it."
So Lessig and Stallman are on the same side of this, emphasizing users rights when they buy copyrighted works.
I know that Lessig wrote the foreword to RMS's collected essays; but OTOH, Lessig says "open" rather than "free" now.
His best speech is called "Free Culture", his upcoming book has the same title. http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/
Wouter Vanden Hove http://www.opencursus.be http://www.open-education.org
PS: Whoops, I've got two "Open"s in my urls. :)
This is the sort of thing that has publishers, and the likes of HP and Microsoft, licking their chops. Control of curriculum, technology, content, distribution, etc. Wikimedia can see to it that content is free, open source software and hardware vendors can see to it that interoperability and transparency are the order of the day. If this can be accomplished - and it will - we won't see learners chained to ever-more-expensive and cumbersome systems like this one in the future.
Note that this is happening in Florida, one of the "big three" curriculum states. California and Texas are also slated for rollouts like this from MSFT and other vendors. Other states will follow. Now is the time to show public educators that there's a better, cheaper, more flexible way to do things.
Sanford
****** Read on... (from www.dailywireless.org)
Students at Ocoee Middle School in Florida will be among the nation's first to experience round-the-clock fingertip access via a joint project involving Microsoft Corp.; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; and HP. http://www.stockworld.de/msg/570392.html
The first-of-its-kind educational project, will gauge how well students learn using a Tablet PC and a Web-based curriculum with computers and full-time Internet access for everyone. Microsoft Class Server http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=MobileSchools enables students and teachers to log into their Tablet PC, notebook PC, or Pocket PC for anytime access to assignments and work management.
Using the wireless Tablet PCs, students will have practically-anywhere access to their Holt Online Learning curriculum and a host of Microsoft tools, including Producer for PowerPoint(R), Movie Maker 2, Windows Media(R) Series 9 and Encarta(R) Reference Library 2004. Students will be able to take handwritten notes, make and share journal entries, and electronically complete exercises, homework assignments and tests on a single device.
Ocoee is one of the first four showcase sites for the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) in the nation. A student ID card is used for a keyless entry system as well as library checkout and cafeteria purchases. Students logon to the wide area network and immediately access their desktop from anywhere in the school. Technology is integrated throughout the school into the teaching and learning process.
Toby Bartels wrote:
I really don't know anything about CC's Lawrence Lessig. Given the internecine political battles between "free" and "open", does anybody know how RMS and Lessig feel about each other?
I have no idea, actually.
But I know that Lessig wants the CC licenses to be widely used, and I think that he'd be happy to make changes for the purpose of 'interoperability' with FDL. That's just a guess on my part, I don't actually know until I ask.
I'm actually just waiting to ask both of them until I'm sure I've got it all straight in my mind and can present it well.
I personally always try to say 'GNU-free' rather than 'open content', even though the Wikipedia front page says 'open content'. I have no particular political axe to grind, so I use the term that doesn't seem to upset anyway. :-)
--Jimbo
[Crossposted to <wikien-L>, since it discusses an edit of the main page.]
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:
I personally always try to say 'GNU-free' rather than 'open content', even though the Wikipedia front page says 'open content'. I have no particular political axe to grind, so I use the term that doesn't seem to upset anyway. :-)
Then it should say "free and open content". I'll change it right now!
-- Toby
Op vr 22-08-2003, om 18:12 schreef Jimmy Wales:
A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would allow for relicensing under LFDL.
The CC Licenses have a problem of their own: they don't have an "or any later version"-clause. Perhaps we could add that ourselves if we start using it.
Wouter Vanden Hove www.opencursus.be
Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
The CC Licenses have a problem of their own: they don't have an "or any later version"-clause. Perhaps we could add that ourselves if we start using it.
You're supposed to use the GNU licences thus: "This is covered under the GNU Whatever License Version x.y or any later version; the current version is at this URL.", but you're supposed to use the CC licences thus: "This is covered under the CC Whatever License; the license is at this URL.". So if people have been doing that, then CC can change the text of the licence just fine; the only licence is the latest version.
NTIAAL, but that's how it looks to me.
-- Toby
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Yes, but there's a solution to that, at least I think so.
Anything released under FDL 1.x or 2.0 with no invariant sections, no Front-Cover texts, and no Back-Cover texts can be distributed under the terms of LFDL 2.0 *or* FDL 2.0. Anything release under FDL 1.x with invariant sections can be released under FDL 2.0.
And then LFDL can be simpler and worded carefully so as to maximize compatibility with CC SA.
A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would allow for relicensing under LFDL.
--Jimbo
Sorry that this is so late, I've been on vacation.
Does the CC SA have provisions for transparent coppies? I think that that's a major difference in some people's minds (in the case of ebooks, etc). LDan
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
Does the CC SA have provisions for transparent coppies? I think that that's a major difference in some people's minds (in the case of ebooks, etc). LDan
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/legalcode
Yes, it's in there, in this form:
You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement.
This is different in many ways from the way the GNU FDL spells it out, but in essence, it's the same thing.
That's the real problem of incompatibility that I think can only be solved through an explicit recognition of each other's licenses or clauses allowing the use of other licenses that have 'substantially similar' provisions.
--Jimbo
Sanford Forte wrote:
If a school district, or a private printer, want to satisfy the general frameworks required by a specific state, *all* of the material should be able to clear, *without* hassles.
How is mixing and matching incompatible licenses in the same book making things easier? All this does is make it a bigger hassle for the school districts; now instead of adhering to the terms of one license, they have
to
adhere to the terms of more than one and possibly many.
----------------- That was my point (obviously, I didn't express it well).
For maximum impact, *every* basic curriculum taken on by WP should have *all* materials available as non-GNU-limited...even if that means starting from scratch with some modules for which there is already GNU-limited content available.
What is so limiting about the GNU FDL? It was specifically written for textbooks and manuals.
-------------- The combinations and permutations that come out of all these licensing 'possibilities' are confusing (to me, anyway...and I imagine these issues might also confuse naive (unfaniliar with the deep vagaries of open source licensing) users who want to deploy these materials).
In short, what I'm trying to say, is that if a school district, or a private printer, want to take the first WP pilot (let's say it's in history), they should be able to do that wihout having to worry about copyright issues, period. (and that includes being able to use all the modules [if that's the way it's done], no matter the license. If my worries about that, relative to this project, are unfounded, great. And, thanks for hanging in there and hashing this out; it's confusing.
One thing: I would love to see a simple (a few paragraphs) explanation - written for the layperson (I'm one of those) of what the advantages and limitations are of using (for starters) material from the pilot, given the license(s) deployed in that project.
I can just see a sales representative form Prentice Hall (all the way up to the CEO of that company's textbook division) wining and dining textbook committee people from various states and bringing stuff like this up just before srucial votes are cast to accept or not accept certain books for district consideration.
And they would not do the same for any other copyleft textbook?
-------- Sure. However, to the degree that the licensing *doesn't* permit seamless use, and *understanding of issues created by incompatible lecenses in the body of material being considered* by the users, to that degree the argument against using this stuff will be that much stronger. Again, if what I've just brought up is a non-issue, based on how the pilot will play out, great. (I'm still trying to decipher all of this licensing mumbo-jumbo ;)
Also, I can see the 'copyright police', prompted by commercial publishers, trying to intimidate privae and home schools into doing certain things with GNU-limited material. This industry knows how to use 'dirty'tricks to get its way.
Since the text is free, then how are they going to do that? We already
plan to
work with the GNU people to fix the parts of the license we don't like.
---------------- Great, that helps clear up the issue for me.
Sanford
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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