Mike.lifeguard wrote:
The problem is that there is normally no proof that a certain user has agreed to dual-license their work. You can /say/ that something is GFDL/CC-by-sa but that doesn't make it so. You actually have to get people to explicitly agree to it, which I have not seen done in a satisfactory way. By "satisfactory" I really mean "legally acceptable" - this is not some arbitrary requirement I have invented.
Since that's the case, removing notices that a book is dual-licensed is perfectly legitimate - the book /isn't/ dual-licensed, it just claims to be. Unless there is proof that all other contributors have agreed to it explicitly, it is GFDL-only. There may be specific revisions which remain dual-licensed, but we cannot say with any degree of certainty that the book itself (ie the current version of all pages in the book) are multi-licensed.
I agree that multi-licensing is a good thing, but it has to be done right. Currently we have no acceptable method of doing so. Perhaps that will change in the future. Past attempts have unfortunately failed; if there is a case which has succeeded, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me.
Mike
------
I think the reason "we have no acceptable method" of dual-licensing is just because you aren't thinking big enough on it. I don't see any sort of legal reason why you have to obligate any edit on the wiki with any sort of license, including the GFDL, other convention and project/website policy. On this basis, requiring users to add contributions with dual-licenses is identical in nature to requiring just the GFDL alone anyway. It really is the same thing.
I'm also curious about "Past attempts have unfortunately failed"? What attempts are you talking about here? I know that some individual users have attempted to have *ALL* of their edits dual-licensed by noting such actions on their user page, as if by doing so would somehow change the license of the content. In a few cases I've seen some projects that have taken Wikibooks content and have tried to switch from the GFDL to another content license after the fact... something which is even being tried (and apparently has failed to happen) by the WMF itself. But that isn't what is being talked about here.
All it would take is for the website policy to permit dual-licensing of the content, and to enforce the concept that any dual-licensed content that is clearly marked as such would also have to be dual-licensed. The Scratch wikibook is one example of a dual-licensed content that IMHO is marked... perhaps even to an extreme point as I've put the dual licensing "warning" on nearly ever page of the book. If site policy is such that "forking" isn't permitted *within* the website in such cases to be GFDL-only, I fail to see what the real problem is here.
What users do with that content outside of the website can't be controlled, including forks. But that doesn't matter as what is being discussed here is policy internal to the website.
BTW, Andrew, this still gives an "even landscape" for content, as all of it is still available under the GFDL under these sorts of guidelines. I accept that the GFDL is one of the licenses that ought to be mandatory. If you inadvertently take some dual-licensed content and act as if the GFDL is the only license, you haven't broken copyright. I agree that the dual-licensed content issue is a bit more complicated in terms of administration, but I don't think it is really all that much more complicated.
This is also a huge difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. On the 'pedia, it is intended to be one continuous publication, where an individual article having different licensing terms from the rest of the "book" would prove to be unworkable. In this case with Wikibooks, individual books can be unitized and treated somewhat independently. I've been an advocate for some time of individual wikibook autonomy, even to the point of perhaps having slightly contrary policies to the main Wikibooks project itself that don't go against primary pillar policies like NPOV or GFDL requirements. This perception is one of the reasons why Wikibooks in the past has been used as a project incubator for a great many Wikimedia projects, such as Wikiversity.
I'm just afraid that this is one more way that Wikibooks is being sterilized and unduely straight-jacketed with a policy that excludes content rather than trying to find a way to accommodate such creative expressions in a fashion that can both help the contributors as well as allow Wikibooks to grow. Far too much content has been tossed overboard with Wikibooks and driving away far too many users. Please don't do it again!
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Looking at the scratch book in particular, I note that there is not a template on every page, which would be the bare minimum required. Furthermore, even if there were a template on each page, you would still need some explicit agreement to the other license. The edit form still says that the edit is being submitted under the GFDL - unless the user has made a statement elsewhere stating otherwise, then /it is/ being submitted under the GFDL (only).
For example, Kevin k's contributions (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kevin_k) don't seem to me to be dual-licensed. What we /do/ know is that they are GFDL-licensed. The best we can do in that case is to say that /certain revisions/ of each page of the book (which in some cases may be all revisions, including the top revision) are dual-licensed.
I'm not against mutli-licensing (indeed, I multi-license where I can because the GFDL is kinda sucky) but I am against doing so in a legally questionable manner.
Mike
-----Original Message----- From: textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of robert_horning@netzero.net Sent: August 15, 2008 6:09 AM To: textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks
Mike.lifeguard wrote:
The problem is that there is normally no proof that a certain user has agreed to dual-license their work. You can /say/ that something is GFDL/CC-by-sa but that doesn't make it so. You actually have to get people to explicitly agree to it, which I have not seen done in a satisfactory way. By "satisfactory" I really mean "legally acceptable" - this is not some arbitrary requirement I have invented.
Since that's the case, removing notices that a book is dual-licensed is perfectly legitimate - the book /isn't/ dual-licensed, it just claims to be. Unless there is proof that all other contributors have agreed to it explicitly, it is GFDL-only. There may be specific revisions which remain dual-licensed, but we cannot say with any degree of certainty that the book itself (ie the current version of all pages in the book) are multi-licensed.
I agree that multi-licensing is a good thing, but it has to be done right. Currently we have no acceptable method of doing so. Perhaps that will change in the future. Past attempts have unfortunately failed; if there is a case which has succeeded, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me.
Mike
------
I think the reason "we have no acceptable method" of dual-licensing is just because you aren't thinking big enough on it. I don't see any sort of legal reason why you have to obligate any edit on the wiki with any sort of license, including the GFDL, other convention and project/website policy. On this basis, requiring users to add contributions with dual-licenses is identical in nature to requiring just the GFDL alone anyway. It really is the same thing.
I'm also curious about "Past attempts have unfortunately failed"? What attempts are you talking about here? I know that some individual users have attempted to have *ALL* of their edits dual-licensed by noting such actions on their user page, as if by doing so would somehow change the license of the content. In a few cases I've seen some projects that have taken Wikibooks content and have tried to switch from the GFDL to another content license after the fact... something which is even being tried (and apparently has failed to happen) by the WMF itself. But that isn't what is being talked about here.
All it would take is for the website policy to permit dual-licensing of the content, and to enforce the concept that any dual-licensed content that is clearly marked as such would also have to be dual-licensed. The Scratch wikibook is one example of a dual-licensed content that IMHO is marked... perhaps even to an extreme point as I've put the dual licensing "warning" on nearly ever page of the book. If site policy is such that "forking" isn't permitted *within* the website in such cases to be GFDL-only, I fail to see what the real problem is here.
What users do with that content outside of the website can't be controlled, including forks. But that doesn't matter as what is being discussed here is policy internal to the website.
BTW, Andrew, this still gives an "even landscape" for content, as all of it is still available under the GFDL under these sorts of guidelines. I accept that the GFDL is one of the licenses that ought to be mandatory. If you inadvertently take some dual-licensed content and act as if the GFDL is the only license, you haven't broken copyright. I agree that the dual-licensed content issue is a bit more complicated in terms of administration, but I don't think it is really all that much more complicated.
This is also a huge difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. On the 'pedia, it is intended to be one continuous publication, where an individual article having different licensing terms from the rest of the "book" would prove to be unworkable. In this case with Wikibooks, individual books can be unitized and treated somewhat independently. I've been an advocate for some time of individual wikibook autonomy, even to the point of perhaps having slightly contrary policies to the main Wikibooks project itself that don't go against primary pillar policies like NPOV or GFDL requirements. This perception is one of the reasons why Wikibooks in the past has been used as a project incubator for a great many Wikimedia projects, such as Wikiversity.
I'm just afraid that this is one more way that Wikibooks is being sterilized and unduely straight-jacketed with a policy that excludes content rather than trying to find a way to accommodate such creative expressions in a fashion that can both help the contributors as well as allow Wikibooks to grow. Far too much content has been tossed overboard with Wikibooks and driving away far too many users. Please don't do it again!
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On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 5:09 AM, robert_horning@netzero.net robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I think the reason "we have no acceptable method" of dual-licensing is just because you aren't thinking big enough on it. I don't see any sort of legal reason why you have to obligate any edit on the wiki with any sort of license, including the GFDL, other convention and project/website policy. On this basis, requiring users to add contributions with dual-licenses is identical in nature to requiring just the GFDL alone anyway. It really is the same thing.
We don't HAVE to obligate an edit with any particular license, but we do it anyway. Take a look at the copyright notice on the edit page. Take a look at the page footer where it says "All text is released under the GFDL". Take a look at [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]]. Our users have a strong reason to believe that their contributions are released under the GFDL, and that text is available for use and reuse under the GFDL. Adding an "Oh wait, this might not be true" clause makes it harder for everybody.
It gets harder for content reusers to apply our material, because they have to figure out what the individual license stipulations on each book are. It makes it harder for contributors, because they have to figure out what license they are agreeing to before they are even allowed to make an edit. We could change the copyright notice to say "All text is released under the GFDL, except for some books where additional license terms are in effect. Use at your own risk", but that doesn't help anybody.
Multi licensing is nice, and I appreciate the idealism behind it. However, the reality is that there are just too many problems with it. If we "think big" about this, we also have to seriously look at the big problems, not just the big benefits.
All it would take is for the website policy to permit dual-licensing of the content, and to enforce the concept that any dual-licensed content that is clearly marked as such would also have to be dual-licensed. The Scratch wikibook is one example of a dual-licensed content that IMHO is marked... perhaps even to an extreme point as I've put the dual licensing "warning" on nearly ever page of the book. If site policy is such that "forking" isn't permitted *within* the website in such cases to be GFDL-only, I fail to see what the real problem is here.
The real problem, even if we change our disclaimers and put notices on every page of every multi-licensed book is that we lack consistency. We start asking people to wade through our licensing problems. It gets harder for new authors to create a book because they have to select a license (or a set of licenses) and they have to mark pages with notices to the effect. It gets harder for new contributors, because they have to be aware of the individual licensing requirements before they can contribute. It gets harder for content reusers because they have to know and understand all the licensing ramifications of each individual book. It's definitely going to make things harder on our patrollers and our admins who are going to be tasked with enforcing a myriad of licenses.
In short, this makes everything harder for everybody, which is the exact opposite of the trend we've been pursuing till now. We need to be making things easier, make it quicker for new contributors to get acclimated, not the opposite.
BTW, Andrew, this still gives an "even landscape" for content, as all of it is still available under the GFDL under these sorts of guidelines. I accept that the GFDL is one of the licenses that ought to be mandatory. If you inadvertently take some dual-licensed content and act as if the GFDL is the only license, you haven't broken copyright. I agree that the dual-licensed content issue is a bit more complicated in terms of administration, but I don't think it is really all that much more complicated.
Any more complicated really should be unacceptable. Creating a situation where people can "inadvertently" make any legally binding decision that they are not aware of beforehand seems like a bad idea for us. We're asking people to become experts in this kind of stuff, when we can't seem to agree on the fundamentals of it ourselves. It's like opening pandora's box and saying that our contributors need to deal with the consequences.
This is also a huge difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. On the 'pedia, it is intended to be one continuous publication, where an individual article having different licensing terms from the rest of the "book" would prove to be unworkable. In this case with Wikibooks, individual books can be unitized and treated somewhat independently.
This is one of the points that I do like, and the autonomy of books is something I've been working towards myself. We give authors plenty of rope when they create a new book, but adding ambiguous licensing requirements to the mix just gives them some creative ways to hang themselves with it.
We have a collection of individual books within a structurally sound and consistent community framework. Take away the consistency and the structural soundness, and books won't just be independent: They will be alone and abandoned.
I'm just afraid that this is one more way that Wikibooks is being sterilized and unduely straight-jacketed with a policy that excludes content rather than trying to find a way to accommodate such creative expressions in a fashion that can both help the contributors as well as allow Wikibooks to grow. Far too much content has been tossed overboard with Wikibooks and driving away far too many users. Please don't do it again!
I appreciate the historical perspective too, but I see the exact opposite outcome that you are hoping for. Adding undue complexity to our licensing scheme could put a chill on our entire project, disheartening some of our existing members and scaring away new ones. Our growth and stability are too tenuous right now to be making all sorts of exploratory changes to our basic formulation. I'm sorry to be a party pooper here, but I'm trying to be very realistic.
--Andrew Whitworth
2008/8/16 Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com:
It gets harder for content reusers to apply our material, because they have to figure out what the individual license stipulations on each book are. It makes it harder for contributors, because they have to figure out what license they are agreeing to before they are even allowed to make an edit. We could change the copyright notice to say "All text is released under the GFDL, except for some books where additional license terms are in effect. Use at your own risk", but that doesn't help anybody.
If you make a requirement that each book must be licensed under at least the GFDL, but allow to potentially other licenses, then you can give straightforward instructions to content reusers - they can always use the GFDL. (which is hardly the easiest license in the world to comply with BTW.)
Does Wikibooks need some new functionality in MediaWiki, for example the possibility of specifying a custom MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning to be displayed?
e.g.... on a page, you have {{COPYRIGHTWARNING:Foobook}} It has no visible output, but when you edit the page, instead of seeing http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning below the edit box, the user sees MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/Foobook ... or some other similar system. Maybe just specify the full name of an appropriate template.
Or maybe... on a page, you have {{LICENSES:GFDL|http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License,CC-BY-SA-3.0;htt... i.e. {{LICENSES|licensename1,licenseurl1;licensename2,licenseurl2}}
and then [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]] works slightly differently. If no {{LICENSES}} are marked on the page, it does the default message it does now. If {{LICENSES}} are supplied, then it inserts links to each of the license names, into the text of MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning.
Would something like this help?
The real problem, even if we change our disclaimers and put notices on every page of every multi-licensed book is that we lack consistency.
Wikis always lack consistency. :) It's almost a logical consequence.
We start asking people to wade through our licensing problems. It gets harder for new authors to create a book because they have to select a license (or a set of licenses) and they have to mark pages with notices to the effect.
No, by default all books are just GFDL. Same as now.
It gets harder for new contributors, because
they have to be aware of the individual licensing requirements before they can contribute.
Do you think all current contributors brush up on their knowledge of the finer points of the GFDL before they leap in?
We are not asking something radically unexpected. If contributors know anything about the licensing it's hopefully that we want to encourage re-use and modification. Hopefully they're also aware that the GFDL allows commercial use, but that still comes as a surprise to longtime editors every now and then.
I guess my point is, if you want to set a higher standard of contributor understanding than we currently -in reality- have, then of course dual-licensing is bound to be unacceptable.
It gets harder for content reusers because they
have to know and understand all the licensing ramifications of each individual book.
It gets easier because they have more licenses to choose from, and ones that are easier to understand and comply with than the GFDL. They only have to choose one license, after all -- not comply with all simultaneously (unless they want).
It's definitely going to make things harder on our
patrollers and our admins who are going to be tasked with enforcing a myriad of licenses.
I don't quite get this difficulty. Enforcing how? How will it be different to enforcing the GFDL?
Have a multi-licensing policy like this: * All books must be licensed under the GFDL. * By default, a book is only licensed under the GFDL. Multi-licensed books must be clearly marked as such. (insert your favourite recommendations for "clearly marked" here.) * Books may be multi-licensed if there is good cause. ** e.g. Wanting to keep a book synchronised with another source which is already multi-licensed. ** e.g. Wanting to produce a book for a particular environment where the GFDL alone would not be acceptable. (some other wiki with another license, or maybe some opencourseware thing, whatever) * *All* book licenses must be listed as Free Culture Licenses at http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses . (this stops someone starting a GFDL + CC-BY-NC-SA book. which I presume you want to do.)
Wikibooks is not going to survive, let alone thrive, as an island.
Respectfully, Brianna
I think before Wikibooks goes jumping head first into outright accepting dual licensed books, Wikibooks first needs to as a project find solutions to its current problems:
1. People are left hanging when it comes to what they need to do in order to be in compliance with the GFDL. This requires people to be experts in GFDL compliance.
2. People are left to figure out what licenses images and other media use, or if public domain or fair use is being used, and what that means for there reuse, assuming people are even aware that other considerations are necessary when reusing those parts of a book.
3. People are left on their own when it comes to any legal ramifications that might steam from getting any of this wrong, reducing the likelihood that Wikibooks content will be reused, redistributed, and modified outside of Wikibooks, except by the most savvy of users.
4. People seem to unable to agree as to whether or not these are in fact issues or people are making mountains out of anthills. People who do agree that a problem exists cannot seem to agree on a solution.
I think Wikibooks needs to solve these problems before even considering trying to tackle dual licensed books and how to make it work, instead of ignoring the current problems.
There are probably additional problems I've failed to mention, which either aren't coming to mind or I'm not even aware of.
-- darklama on en.wikibooks
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:17 PM, darklama darklama@gmail.com wrote:
I think before Wikibooks goes jumping head first into outright accepting dual licensed books, Wikibooks first needs to as a project find solutions to its current problems:
- People are left hanging when it comes to what they need to do in
order to be in compliance with the GFDL. This requires people to be experts in GFDL compliance.
I agree, and maybe it's worth our while to write up either an FAQ page about the GFDL, or shooting higher we could create an entire book about the GFDL. This would be an excellent opportunity to form some kind of working partnership with the FSF, or some other free content organization. Such a partnership and such a resource would help drive more traffic to Wikibooks. We could also see if groups like the FSF have any content on the issue already that they would be willing to make a donation of. Again, there is good advertising potential in this.
- People are left to figure out what licenses images and other media
use, or if public domain or fair use is being used, and what that means for there reuse, assuming people are even aware that other considerations are necessary when reusing those parts of a book.
Agreed, the situation is already sticky enough because of multi-licensed images. I've experimented in the past with creating PDF versions and print versions of books that include licensing information about images in the book. This, to make a long story short, is very difficult, tedious, time-consuming manual work. I would love to see a technical solution implemented where image licensing information was automatically included in a generated print or PDF version. With the PDF extension in betatesting currently, this is the kind of feature we should be requesting en masse.
- People are left on their own when it comes to any legal ramifications
that might steam from getting any of this wrong, reducing the likelihood that Wikibooks content will be reused, redistributed, and modified outside of Wikibooks, except by the most savvy of users.
Herein lies the largest problem, I think, and the biggest impetus for us adopting a more flexible licensing scheme. We benefit internally from GFDL-consistency, but outside the WMF cloak the GFDL is not a particularly popular license for written content. Unfortunately we have thousands of books and sheer momentum dictates that we have to stay with the GFDL, at least as the primary license. This might be good reason for us to start putting pressure on the WMF, FSF, and CC to work on license interoperability issues.
I think Wikibooks needs to solve these problems before even considering trying to tackle dual licensed books and how to make it work, instead of ignoring the current problems.
I would welcome a change in licensing policies if we could do it in a manner that was consistent in terms of implementation and legality. We obviously can't just change the license terms on existing books. I don't agree with any solution that is hacked together, tacked on after the fact, or handled haphazardly. Telling our authors that they can select arbitrary sets of licenses for their book, so long as they post disclaimers everywhere is very haphazard and is a poor implementation of this goal we seem to share.
--Andrew Whitworth
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:17 PM, darklama darklama@gmail.com wrote:
I think before Wikibooks goes jumping head first into outright accepting dual licensed books, Wikibooks first needs to as a project find solutions to its current problems:
- People are left hanging when it comes to what they need to do in
order to be in compliance with the GFDL. This requires people to be experts in GFDL compliance.
I agree, and maybe it's worth our while to write up either an FAQ page about the GFDL, or shooting higher we could create an entire book about the GFDL. This would be an excellent opportunity to form some kind of working partnership with the FSF, or some other free content organization. Such a partnership and such a resource would help drive more traffic to Wikibooks. We could also see if groups like the FSF have any content on the issue already that they would be willing to make a donation of. Again, there is good advertising potential in this.
Having the FSF involved in writing a book might be a good start to clarifying requirements Wikibooks and other projects need to follow to be compliant. However I am hoping for something more. Like a took to automatically generate the necessary attributions for inclusion in a book in a way that makes it clear who did what under what licensing terms. This involves needing to answer the question of what's not enough and what's too much information?
- People are left to figure out what licenses images and other media
use, or if public domain or fair use is being used, and what that means for there reuse, assuming people are even aware that other considerations are necessary when reusing those parts of a book.
Agreed, the situation is already sticky enough because of multi-licensed images. I've experimented in the past with creating PDF versions and print versions of books that include licensing information about images in the book. This, to make a long story short, is very difficult, tedious, time-consuming manual work. I would love to see a technical solution implemented where image licensing information was automatically included in a generated print or PDF version. With the PDF extension in betatesting currently, this is the kind of feature we should be requesting en masse.
One possible solution to this could be to take the same attitude towards media as some would like to take towards dual licensing books. Require that at a minimum all media must be licensed under the GFDL or allow relicensing under the GFDL only.
Some questions and problems come to mind regarding this though. Are people obligated to make other people aware that dual licensed media are dual licensed? Is something really dual licensed if people cannot opt out of the dual licensing or must use GFDL? Should Wikibooks have different conditions for contributors as opposed to reusers and redistributors? This would be necessary if Wikibooks wanted to require all media on Wikibooks be at least GFDL, while not making reusers and redistributors obligated to do the same. What benefits would there be for Wikibooks to allow modifications done outside of Wikibooks to become incompatible with Wikibooks' requirements?
Another solution is to just have a tool to generate the attributions for all media used in a book. Question though is what is needed to attribute media used in a book? The media filenames aren't necessarily going to be included with every use of the media within the book to make it easy to associate license with media. Does this mean in order to acknowledge the contributors of a media and the license used that the media would need to be a literal part of the attribution? Does every media that uses the same license still need a separate attribution? Would separate attributions be needed if the book and all media used in the book used the same license? Would this still be a problem if the book and all the media in the book used the same license?
- People are left on their own when it comes to any legal ramifications
that might steam from getting any of this wrong, reducing the likelihood that Wikibooks content will be reused, redistributed, and modified outside of Wikibooks, except by the most savvy of users.
Herein lies the largest problem, I think, and the biggest impetus for us adopting a more flexible licensing scheme. We benefit internally from GFDL-consistency, but outside the WMF cloak the GFDL is not a particularly popular license for written content. Unfortunately we have thousands of books and sheer momentum dictates that we have to stay with the GFDL, at least as the primary license. This might be good reason for us to start putting pressure on the WMF, FSF, and CC to work on license interoperability issues.
I agree its the largest problem. However I think this problem exists regardless of what license is used and the interoperability of the license used. Wikibooks would just be replacing the issue of how to correctly use one license with the issue of how to correctly use another license, if a change in license were possible.
I think Wikibooks needs to solve these problems before even considering trying to tackle dual licensed books and how to make it work, instead of ignoring the current problems.
I would welcome a change in licensing policies if we could do it in a manner that was consistent in terms of implementation and legality. We obviously can't just change the license terms on existing books. I don't agree with any solution that is hacked together, tacked on after the fact, or handled haphazardly. Telling our authors that they can select arbitrary sets of licenses for their book, so long as they post disclaimers everywhere is very haphazard and is a poor implementation of this goal we seem to share.
--Andrew Whitworth
In theory by contributing to Wikibooks, Wikibooks is the organization being granted a right to use the work under the GFDL, and could require any further use of books and media outside of Wikibooks acknowledge Wikibooks and link back to Wikibooks, unless individual contributors gives a person permission to do otherwise. This would mean that individual contributors would not need to be acknowledged unless someone wants to use contents available on Wikibooks in some other way.
However I'm not sure whether that is legal. Right now Wikibooks' copyright policy does say to link back to the book or module for use on the Internet, and doesn't mention attributing contributors. Wikibooks only seems to mention requiring attribution for hard copies. If changing Wikibooks' copyright policy to not require attributing contributors in hard copies were legal without needing more to be done first, than that would be my recommendation, as it would greatly simplify reuse and redistribution in hard copy form.
I unfortunately have no real ideas on how to resolve these problems. I just believe anything that requires a lot of complicated work for anyone to be compliant, to be unreasonable and unacceptable.
-- darklama on en.wikibooks
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:41 PM, darklama darklama@gmail.com wrote:
Having the FSF involved in writing a book might be a good start to clarifying requirements Wikibooks and other projects need to follow to be compliant. However I am hoping for something more. Like a took to automatically generate the necessary attributions for inclusion in a book in a way that makes it clear who did what under what licensing terms. This involves needing to answer the question of what's not enough and what's too much information?
Ah, the ever wished-for technical solution. This is a problem not just for Wikibooks but for all WMF projects. There just plain isn't an easy automated way to extract information about the contribution history into an easy-to-print format. GFDL does require we attribute our authors, and at the moment we (the royal "we" for all WMF contributors) are hoping that our difficult-to-parse history pages satisfy this requirement.
Getting attribution information for authors, both authors of content and images, included into our distributable versions (PDF and Print versions) is a must, for the GFDL or any other copyleft license that we use. This is a feature that we should demand be included in the PDF extension that is being tested right now. I agree with darklama that we can't really move forward on any issue until this most basic requirement is satisfied from a technical perspective.
One possible solution to this could be to take the same attitude towards media as some would like to take towards dual licensing books. Require that at a minimum all media must be licensed under the GFDL or allow relicensing under the GFDL only.
Here I think is my biggest objection, and I think I've been unable to describe it properly heretofore. Dual licenses are typically either-or situations, options are presented and the reuser may select one, the other, or both at their discretion. What we would have to do on Wikibooks to allow dual-licensing of books is not only to specify what licenses were the available options, but also we must mandate additional terms: That the entire multi-licensing scheme must be preserved on Wikibooks for compatibility, that reusers may select either-or license (except reusers on Wikibooks itself).
Imagine that we have a book that is GFDL+CC-BY-SA-3.0. Content reusers on a different website take our book, make modifications to it, and release the book under the GFDL only. Now, those changes cannot be folded back into our book because the contributions do not allow CC-BY-SA-3.0. We then lose access to changes made to our content downstream, the exact situation that copyleft licenses try to prevent. In the case we have now our content is always GFDL, downstream derivatives are always GFDL, users and reusers always have to use the GFDL, everything works seemlessly.
Another solution is to just have a tool to generate the attributions for all media used in a book. Question though is what is needed to attribute media used in a book? The media filenames aren't necessarily going to be included with every use of the media within the book to make it easy to associate license with media. Does this mean in order to acknowledge the contributors of a media and the license used that the media would need to be a literal part of the attribution? Does every media that uses the same license still need a separate attribution? Would separate attributions be needed if the book and all media used in the book used the same license? Would this still be a problem if the book and all the media in the book used the same license?
Great questions, all. I submit for the consideration of all discussion participants now some of the work I've attempted to do on the [[Control Systems]] book. Take a look at this page, for reference:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Control_Systems/Licensing
This is the most that I've seen in any book to try and satisfy the differing license requirements of our books and our image media, and it still isn't enough. For most licenses, we would need to include attribution lists not just for the pages in the text, but also the images. Some other licenses also require that we include the text of those licenses with their respective images in the distributed copy of the book.
What we really need is something to standardize and automate this process. Some kind of MediaWiki-based technical solution would be ideal for this, but some kind of extension or JavaScript or whatever would be fine too.
--Andrew Whitworth
Ah, the ever wished-for technical solution. This is a problem not just
for Wikibooks but for all WMF projects. There just plain isn't an easy automated way to extract information about the contribution history into an easy-to-print format. GFDL does require we attribute our authors, and at the moment we (the royal "we" for all WMF contributors) are hoping that our difficult-to-parse history pages satisfy this requirement.
can i suggest something I know will be fruitless and i apologise knowingly in advance but i feel a little compelled to suggest it anyway...mediawiki might not be the right technology for wikibooks...i would think it might be a bit sane to actually address this issue, even just on the 'what if' level... i understand the institutional and legacy issues however it might be an interesting academic excercise to consider _not_ bending mediawiki to solve something when it is clearly not designed for book content...instead take the issue through a technical 'needs' process and look for technical solutions that suit these needs...
adam
Getting attribution information for authors, both authors of content and images, included into our distributable versions (PDF and Print versions) is a must, for the GFDL or any other copyleft license that we use. This is a feature that we should demand be included in the PDF extension that is being tested right now. I agree with darklama that we can't really move forward on any issue until this most basic requirement is satisfied from a technical perspective.
One possible solution to this could be to take the same attitude towards media as some would like to take towards dual licensing books. Require that at a minimum all media must be licensed under the GFDL or allow relicensing under the GFDL only.
Here I think is my biggest objection, and I think I've been unable to describe it properly heretofore. Dual licenses are typically either-or situations, options are presented and the reuser may select one, the other, or both at their discretion. What we would have to do on Wikibooks to allow dual-licensing of books is not only to specify what licenses were the available options, but also we must mandate additional terms: That the entire multi-licensing scheme must be preserved on Wikibooks for compatibility, that reusers may select either-or license (except reusers on Wikibooks itself).
Imagine that we have a book that is GFDL+CC-BY-SA-3.0. Content reusers on a different website take our book, make modifications to it, and release the book under the GFDL only. Now, those changes cannot be folded back into our book because the contributions do not allow CC-BY-SA-3.0. We then lose access to changes made to our content downstream, the exact situation that copyleft licenses try to prevent. In the case we have now our content is always GFDL, downstream derivatives are always GFDL, users and reusers always have to use the GFDL, everything works seemlessly.
Another solution is to just have a tool to generate the attributions for all media used in a book. Question though is what is needed to attribute media used in a book? The media filenames aren't necessarily going to be included with every use of the media within the book to make it easy to associate license with media. Does this mean in order to acknowledge the contributors of a media and the license used that the media would need to be a literal part of the attribution? Does every media that uses the same license still need a separate attribution? Would separate attributions be needed if the book and all media used in the book used the same license? Would this still be a problem if the book and all the media in the book used the same license?
Great questions, all. I submit for the consideration of all discussion participants now some of the work I've attempted to do on the [[Control Systems]] book. Take a look at this page, for reference:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Control_Systems/Licensing
This is the most that I've seen in any book to try and satisfy the differing license requirements of our books and our image media, and it still isn't enough. For most licenses, we would need to include attribution lists not just for the pages in the text, but also the images. Some other licenses also require that we include the text of those licenses with their respective images in the distributed copy of the book.
What we really need is something to standardize and automate this process. Some kind of MediaWiki-based technical solution would be ideal for this, but some kind of extension or JavaScript or whatever would be fine too.
--Andrew Whitworth
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Oh, how I would love to do that. You're right, though: inertia and tradition make that more-or-less impossible at this point. That said, the software is good enough that we can make it work. We have several successful books, right? So it's not impossible.
I think the best option on the software side will be to put some community effort into getting a grant (or some other source of funds) and hiring a developer to do work for the Wikibooks projects specifically, since there seem to be no current paid or volunteer developer interested in doing work on these issues. Or we can continue to hope they will become interested :D
Mike
-----Original Message----- From: textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of adam hyde Sent: August 17, 2008 7:12 PM To: Wikimedia textbook discussion Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks
can i suggest something I know will be fruitless and i apologise knowingly in advance but i feel a little compelled to suggest it anyway...mediawiki might not be the right technology for wikibooks...i would think it might be a bit sane to actually address this issue, even just on the 'what if' level... i understand the institutional and legacy issues however it might be an interesting academic excercise to consider _not_ bending mediawiki to solve something when it is clearly not designed for book content...instead take the issue through a technical 'needs' process and look for technical solutions that suit these needs...
adam
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 6:11 PM, adam hyde adam@flossmanuals.net wrote:
can i suggest something I know will be fruitless and i apologise knowingly in advance but i feel a little compelled to suggest it anyway...mediawiki might not be the right technology for wikibooks...i would think it might be a bit sane to actually address this issue, even just on the 'what if' level... i understand the institutional and legacy issues however it might be an interesting academic excercise to consider _not_ bending mediawiki to solve something when it is clearly not designed for book content...instead take the issue through a technical 'needs' process and look for technical solutions that suit these needs...
Not to be rude, but "Duh!" Of course MediaWiki isn't the right software for our purpose. It's not completely inappropriate, but there are some serious aspects that would need to be addressed in an ideal world. Our technical wishlist is so long that Santa Claus won't even read it all, and I've been a VERY good boy so far this year :).
Technical momentum dictates that we stay with MediaWiki, however. It would be a gargantuan exercise to translate our database into another format for another software platform, and translate the wikitext in all our pages to be suitable for a different rendering engine. Plus, all the documentation we would have to rewrite, etc. Fortunately for us, we're able to get incremental changes made through bug reporting, and the WMF has been demonstrably more supportive of our needs in recent months, so things have been changing for the better. I've long advocated that we create a picture of what an "ideal" Wikibooks would be for us, and start approaching it in baby steps. Things like the FlaggedRevs extension and the new PDF extension are strong steps in that direction. We have a few more requests in the queue regarding the hierarchical structure of books and the way MediaWiki can support that architecture better. After that, I really think automated attribution needs to be high up on our list of needs.
--Andrew Whitworth
Not to be rude, but "Duh!" Of course MediaWiki isn't the right software for our purpose. It's not completely inappropriate, but there are some serious aspects that would need to be addressed in an ideal world. Our technical wishlist is so long that Santa Claus won't even read it all, and I've been a VERY good boy so far this year :).
Technical momentum dictates that we stay with MediaWiki, however. It would be a gargantuan exercise to translate our database into another format for another software platform, and translate the wikitext in all our pages to be suitable for a different rendering engine. Plus, all the documentation we would have to rewrite, etc. Fortunately for us, we're able to get incremental changes made through bug reporting, and the WMF has been demonstrably more supportive of our needs in recent months, so things have been changing for the better. I've long advocated that we create a picture of what an "ideal" Wikibooks would be for us, and start approaching it in baby steps. Things like the FlaggedRevs extension and the new PDF extension are strong steps in that direction. We have a few more requests in the queue regarding the hierarchical structure of books and the way MediaWiki can support that architecture better. After that, I really think automated attribution needs to be high up on our list of needs.
well...I did say it was going to a fruitless suggestion right ;) But...on the serious side...changing technology now is better than any point in the future because it is only going to get harder as more content is added etc...
I would say its better to change now, than bend mediawiki - which is a great software, don't get me wrong - into a shape it doesn't want to make...it might be a lot of work now, but the future users of wikibooks would be grateful for it
anyways...as i said before...i understand the issues, but I'm also an optimist of sorts and I would hope the WMF, which has made many interesting and courageous decisions, might be a brave enough to recognise the limitations of mediawiki in the wikibook context, and decide in favour of the project needs by adopting a more suitable technology
adam
--Andrew Whitworth
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org