Mav wrote:

Toby Bartels wrote:

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OTOH, the physics and chemistry texts might well want to borrow, not just information, but entire chunks of text with only minor changes -- especially given the modular nature of textbooks that's been proposed here, where different textbooks might share the exact same module.

And how exactly is this going to work if the physics textbook is GNU FDLd and the chemistry book is CCSA? You cannot mix and match like that because modules are part of a distinct work. Each work has to be under the same license.

That's the whole point of my paragraph, which was an example of the sort of detail that we must think through. Because they might borrow from each other, they must switch over together. (Or at least once one switches, then the other can't switch to anything else.) OTOH, a physics book deliberately written in a nonstandard style might not want to borrow from them, so wouldn't need to switch.

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I suspect that RMS will accept removing the Invariant Sections. But I can't imagine him changing the GNU FDL to allow redistribution under a Creative Commons license;

If he only removes the invariant sections then the GNU FDL is completely copyleft and everything major we want it to be. Therefore the differences between the CCSA and the FDL will be minimal and the advantages of allowing CCSA along side of the FDL will also be minimal.

No, removing the IS (and Cover Texts, etc) only means that the CC SA licences are no longer objectively better than the GNU FDL. All of the incompatibility issues remain, which is what makes a disjunctive licence better. Compatibility, after all, is what is driving this disagreement. (And not necessarily the compatibility issues that you think! See the end of this post.)

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since CC doesn't share the FSF's ethical philosophy (they even offer the non-free ND and NC license options!),

Strawman alert: The CCSA is the only CC license that could possibly be compatible with the GNU FDL in both directions.

Strawman??? Let me explain this in more detail.

RMS cares about philosophy, about ethics. He seems to me to regard the "Open Source" guys as sell-outs. He's happy to work with them on projects, but there's a philosophical rift. CC has allied itself with the catchphrase "open", not with "free". Lawrence Lessig does not share RMS's ethical philosophy. The fact that his group offer nonfree licences -- especially the ND option, which forbids derivative works -- is clear evidence of their ethical failure. Naturally, /if/ an intercompatibility is developed, then it will be with an SA licence (more likely CC BY-SA IMO). But my point here is RMS's trust of the other group.

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how can he be sure that CC licenses will remain free?

Simple: "Copyrighted works under the GNU FDL 2.0 or later version created by the Free Software Foundation can be copied, modified and distributed in full and placed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license version 2.0 or later version deemed to be sufficiently free and copyleft per FSF ruling. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl/compatibility/ for updates on the status of the Creative Commons Share Alike license."

This will work until CC makes their licence refer (as it ought) to yet other licences that RMS and GNU might not have read -- I'm thinking in particular of future versions of the CC licence. As soon as CC SA 2.1 says "or any future version of CC SA", then GNU FDL can't allow CC SA 2.1, only CC SA 2.0. Which people won't use anymore, and so nothing is gained.

Not that I mean to criticise your idea entirely; we can refine it. And we should present it to RMS when we try to win him over. Unfortunately, I'm more convinced than ever that we never will, after reading discussions on the Debian legal list as late as April. He was strongly against even getting rid of Invariant Sections, which the FSF uses to place the GNU Manifesto in its documentation. If a future distributor that was hostile to free software could remove that manifesto from the documentation, then future readers wouldn't have the opportunity to be indoctrinated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hread about why free software is so important -- so his argument goes. If Debian can't convince him, then I doubt that we can. Not that we shouldn't try! -- but we shouldn't count on it.

Anyway, the bottom line is that making the licences compatible depends on action by LL and RMS that may or may not occur. I don't want to rely on that when submitting material that I write; I want it to be available to everybody (or as many as possible), not just to GNU FDL users.

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Who has trouble understanding it?

Given the number of copyvios we get daily and the great deal of confusion people have over copyright issues I would say the answer is self-evident.

These confusions aren't about the GNU FDL; they're about whether contributed material is PD or not. Our copyvios are from people that think something proprietary is PD, not from people that think that something proprietary is GNU FDL. (Or they're from people that ignore copyrights entirely!) We've had very few people borrowing our own work incorrectly -- and we don't even explain the GNU FDL to these people either; we just tell them to link to us and the licence and they do it.

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I still expect that most users don't care at all.

And they will furthermore copy text Willy nilly between the various Wikimedia projects. This should be encouraged. However having incompatible licenses /within/ Wikimedia will hinder this free exchange.

They /shouldn't/ copy text willy nilly between physics and math texts. Or even between two physics texts with strongly different styles. This has been discussed before in a different guise: Textbooks are different from the encyclopaedia, because they have their own stylistic integrities to maintain. (That's also why text copied directly from WP won't usually be wanted in the first place.)

Already, the half-hearted beginnings at <textbook.wikipedia.org> (and the one full-hearted beginning, Karl Wick's OChem text) are developing their own separate identities with no cross-linking. This is the future of Wikibooks -- very different from Wikipedia. Modules are important to allow variations on a theme, so each theme (if you will) must keep the same licence. But the math text and the cookbook have incompatible themes.

BTW, we have created over 200,000 encyclopedia articles ourselves and only occasionally use public domain or GFDL text created elsewhere. There is no reason to believe that the textbook project will be any different.

I agree completely!!!

Your main argument has been that Wikibooks must be GNU FDL because Wikipedia already is. But Wikibooks, like Wikipedia did, can start on its own, generally not borrowing from WP or other sources. You already allowed that a disjunctive licence (like what Jimmy described) might have been better for Wikipedia when it just started out. Well, Wikibooks /is/ just starting out.

I suppose that you said this to argue that Wikibooks also isn't likely to want much CC material either. I agree! I mentioned that it might only as a counterpart to your argument that Wikibooks might want some GNU material. If you agree that it probably won't want anything, then I'm perfectly happy to stipulate that.

The main reason not to use the GNU FDL alone is -- and has been since Karl first brought it up -- so that /other/ people will be able to use our work. We can't anticipate now whether GNU or CC is the future, so we should keep our work open to as much as possible. Using the GNU FDL only is a limit on future users' freedoms.

The basic premise of free copyleft content is to allow the work to be used by anybody that will themselves keep the work free and copyleft. These people might be: 1: People deriving works from our stuff alone; 2: People combining our work with GNU stuff; 3: People combining our work with CC stuff; 4: People combining our work with both GNU stuff and CC stuff. (There are other possibilities as well, of course.) Now, there's nothing that our licence can do for (4); their only hope is that RMS and LL will work together. And 1 is possible no matter which licence we choose. You would help 2 as well but leave 3 out to dry. I would help both. My way is freer.

Above all else; keep it simple.

If keeping it simple were above all else, then we would just put everything in the public domain. That's a lot simpler than these complicated licences. Even making all contributions the property of Wikimedia would be simpler than any copyleft licence. Clearly, keeping it simple is /not/ above all else.

Freedom is more important than keeping it simple. If we didn't believe that, then we'd go work for EB. Freedom is the core reason for the disjunctive licence.

-- Toby