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. Unless there is some compelling argument here, I'm of the view that the non-GFDL bit needs to be removed ASAP. Contributors to Wikibooks may of course license their own contributions (in whole or in part) under anything they want in addition to the GFDL (so Swift's and Rob's contributions to those books may remain PD and CC-by-sa respectively) but derivatives of their work on Wikibooks are GFDL-only unless otherwise stated.
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 should say this goes for any and all other books which are ostensibly "dual-licensed" so if you find others, those arrangements should go on the chopping block as well.
Mike
Dnia Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:55:50 +0200, mike.lifeguard napisał(a):
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. Unless there is some compelling argument here, I'm of the view that the non-GFDL bit needs to be removed ASAP.
I fully agree with you. If an anonymous user comes to a Wikibooks page from Google search results page and makes an edit, he/she sees only notice that "all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence". I think noone would prove in any court that such anonymous user agrees to license his/her edits under Creative Commons license as well.
There is no way to retain dual licensing on Wikibooks, so we should remove any templates stating that a book is dual-licensed. However, we could leave templates saying, for example, that revisions before x May,June etc. 200x are dual-licensed, or that original version (URL to donated book here) was dual-licensed.
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.
Apologies for the fisking.
One could argue that we have little more of an idea whether contributors have agreed to the former, than the latter.
Clicking the save button is enough, legally, to make it GFDL-licensed. This is a non-starter. Furthermore, we are advertised and well-known (as well known as Wikibooks can be :P ) as being GFDL-licensed.
Firstly, there is the inconsistency that the edit page clause doesn't mention the possibility of dual licensing.
Nor should it - it is not the purpose of that system message to educate the user about licensing issues - it's purpose is solely to say "Clicking save means it goes under the GFDL" and nothing more. That's all that's required, and it does it's job.
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.
This is a major issue, as it's not in edit view. Furthermore, we cannot /require/ contributors to license their work under anything other than the GFDL, as repeated below.
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.
We are. GFDL. You can multi-license to your heart's content, but all derivatives of your work are GFDL-only on Wikibooks unless the other user(s) agree to other licensing conditions. And we can't force them to do so.
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.
I would be opposed to doing so for reasons explained above. That is not the purpose of that system message. Furthermore, for practical reasons, we can never ensure that any page remains available under anything except the GFDL. In fact, most modules of uim and Scratch are no longer available under their "other" license. Finally, we cannot require users to license their contributions to a book under anything except the GFDL. (You can't say "Your contribs to this book are PD/CC-by-sa - if you don't like it don't edit" for reasons that need no explanation)
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.
The /licensing/ goes on the chopping block - not the book :) Of course it remains GFDL.
Mike
Dear fellow Wikibookians,
Sorry for having disappeared from this discussion. I began a reply, but my computer died recently and I'll be away for a bit. I just wanted to quickly reply to state my continued interest in the matter and that I'll continue participating in this discussion when I renew my computer.
Sincerely, Martin Swift
This issue comes up so often, I've had plenty of time to revise and perfect my response to it. Dual Licensing is permitted, in theory, but in a much more limited way then what some of our authors intend. The most that an author can do is assert that a particular revision of a particular page is dual licensed, and only if all previous authors (if any) maintain that assertion. If any author edits a page that was dual licensed and chooses to go GFDL-only on their contribution, the page is no longer dual-licensable (but previous revisions still can be, if viewed from the page history).
Imagine a book donation where the donated book is GFDL+X (where X is some other free license). The very first uploaded version of that book also can be marked as being GFDL+X, and a link can be made to the original source with an indication that the original will always be GFDL+X even if future revisions at Wikibooks are GFDL-only.
Many books with complicated arrangements like this may wish to devote an entire page for the purpose, such as "/Licensing" or whatever. A simple notice such as "The original revision of this book as uploaded on mm/dd/yyyy is released under license GFDL+X and is available from LINK".
Besides this arrangement, there isn't anyway for a book to be dual licensed and to remain dual licensed while it's on Wikibooks. We could try to implement some kind of complicated opt-out ("remove this template if you choose to make your contributions GFDL-Only"), but that's not really feasible in the long-run and will only lead to confusion ("But I didn't see the notice!").
In general, besides original versions where the author wants to make clear that an alternate source for the book is released under a dual-license scheme, we can't really support dual-licenses.
--Andrew Whitworth
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