Daniel Mayer wrote:

Specifically I want to know if it would be possible to import Wikipedia text to the textbook project without having to get the permission of every Wikipedian who contributed to the Wikipedia article to agree to dual-license their work.

For more detail please read my previous post on this topic: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-July/000089.html

Well, that's a very very good question.

When I recommended dual licensing, I wasn't thinking of the question of importing stuff from wikipedia.

Ai yi yi, this all seems like such a headache.

I see the options as being:

1. Forget Creative Commons, just use GNU FDL with all it's complexity, for the purpose of easy compatibility with wikipedia.

2. Forget wikipedia imports, use Creative Commons, and everything has to be from scratch. (Yucky, because free and liberal reuse of our wikipedia work is the whole POINT of wikipedia in the FIRST place.)

3. Dual license, and deal with the issue that Mav is talking about, but notice that this is just as difficult as #2, because if we can get permission from wikipedians (likely, but only if we can find them!), it's all good anyway.

This whole discussion makes #1 seem like our only recourse.

Let's discuss this for a few days, and then I'll chat with RMS and Lessig about it. I know RMS is going to say "why don't you just use GNU FDL?" because part of the point of GNU licenses is just this sort of 'viral' spread that forces people to stick with GNU licenses.

But maybe I can convince him to release (someday?) an FDL 2.0 that is a lot more general and easy to understand.

--Jimbo