I've been chatting with Larry Lessig about copyright and license issues, and of course he's a big proponent of his own Creative Commons licenses.
http://creativecommons.org/license/
The GNU FDL is confusing and difficult to apply in a wiki context, and a lot of the language presumes software documentation.
The Creative Commons licenses are much simpler.
I believe that the 'Attribution-Share Alike' license or the 'Share Alike' license is going to be the right one to use if we did choose to go that route.
Actually, what I think we should do, from the outset, is dual-license everything under both licenses. That ensures that the text is compatible with Wikipedia.
It's a bit late for Wikipedia proper to do much good with dual licensing, but for textbooks, it might be a good idea to do it from the outset.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:
I've been chatting with Larry Lessig about copyright and license issues, and of course he's a big proponent of his own Creative Commons licenses.
I agree, Creative Commons is just better. And they have cool videos! ^_^
Actually, what I think we should do, from the outset, is dual-license everything under both licenses. That ensures that the text is compatible with Wikipedia.
That's not a bad idea in any case, to allow compatibility with some other GFDL project.
It's a bit late for Wikipedia proper to do much good with dual licensing, but for textbooks, it might be a good idea to do it from the outset.
How long until all text on Wikipedia is completely rewritten? 5 years? 10? Everything that /I/ write on Wikipedia is automatically free with /no/ restrictions, because /everything/ that I write is free with no restrictions. To be sure, such lack of restrictions applies only insofar as what I've written is /new/ -- otherwise, the rest is still copyright as before, and that material is licensed only under the GFDL. But can it work to require people to dual license their submissions, so long as the Creative Commons licence specifically applies /only/ to the material that's new? (For any given submission, that may be nothing, or everything.) Does such an idea fit into copyright law at all?
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
How long until all text on Wikipedia is completely rewritten? 5 years? 10?
That's a good question.
Everything that /I/ write on Wikipedia is automatically free with /no/ restrictions, because /everything/ that I write is free with no restrictions. To be sure, such lack of restrictions applies only insofar as what I've written is /new/ -- otherwise, the rest is still copyright as before, and that material is licensed only under the GFDL. But can it work to require people to dual license their submissions, so long as the Creative Commons licence specifically applies /only/ to the material that's new? (For any given submission, that may be nothing, or everything.) Does such an idea fit into copyright law at all?
Well, it's hard to say, but basically, I suspect that this approach isn't helpful.
Here's the problem. Imagine that each of the following snippets is GNU FDL.
'ADE' <---- original article 'AbDE' <-- revision, but under the terms of the GNU FDL, this *must* be released under GNU FDL. Perhaps the 'B' portion is *also* released under Attribution-ShareAlike.
After a sequence of further edits, including efforts by someone to remove all of the original 'ADE' text, we end up with:
'abcde', where all of the parts are now released under GNU FDL and Attribution-ShareAlike. But since each step along the way included some GNU FDL, it *still* has to be released under GNU FDL.
And ONLY if 'abcde' is really a competely new aggregation of parts can *any* of it be released under Attribution-ShareAlike.
For example, if I write "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" and release this under the GNU FDL, and you come in and add "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President, and he had red hair." Well, your work is a derivative work, and you have *no right* to release it under Attribution-ShareAlike. I suppose you could release 'and he had red hair' under Attribution-ShareAlike, but ai yi yi, what a mess.
But really, there are no significant problems with GNU FDL. It's complicated, and it reads 'funny' in parts for our context. I wish it were simpler, like Attribution-ShareAlike, but it isn't, so there you go.
--Jimbo
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