My understanding is this:
The elements of a database that are copyrightable are the selection and the
arrangement.
There is no way that we're going to come close to the arrangement of any
other database, so I'm not going to discuss that.
As for the selection (what items the database creators have decided to
include), we really don't have to worry about that. Wikidata is going to be
taking what it needs from various places. I can't think of a single
database, even the US Census database, where we're going be taking anywhere
near as much as we're not going to be taking. Simply put, all of these
databases are going to be holding a lot of information that isn't useful to
our purposes. If we did decide to import a database in whole, then we might
run into arramgenent problems, however Wikidata has neither the technical
mechanisms nor the actual need to import databases whole. We're going to be
taking individual data points, from dozens to hundreds of different places,
and mixing them together.
I think that part of the issue here is that Avenue really isn't aware of
what Wikidata's objectives are. With the objectives that Wikidata has, I
don't see how this could be an issue.
Sven
On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrandecic(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
2012/11/30 Avenue <avenue42(a)gmail.com>
On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrandecic(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
Unfortunately, CC-BY-SA and ODBL are not
compatible. You can not take
content licensed under one license and republish it under the other
license. Thus follows that using ODBL for Wikidata does not relieve us from
*any* of the possible legal issues that are mentioned here due to Wikidata
using CC0 as a license.
I think we are talking about different legal issues. My main concern is
about external databases, with rights held by other organisations, that we
wish to host on Wikidata (in whole or in substantial part).
Wikidata can not and will not host whole databases. I said that explicitly
int he last Email and I am repeating it here. Wikidata is not a collection
of databases. That is also not supported by our software. For this use
cases, CKAN is the appropriate software and DataHub would be an appropriate
public instance of CKAN.
See my earlier post (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2012-November/001239.html)
for an example, based on the data in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England and
the infoboxes for various county articles listed within. This data is
licensed by the UK government under the Open Government License (OGL,
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/)
I believe UK editors would be breaking their country's law if they
uploaded a significant portion of this database to Wikidata without
following the terms of the OGL. These include giving credit and linking to
the license where possible. They could probably do this in an adhoc fashion
through the reference field, but it would be much better to have proper
support for license tracking built in.
You can not upload a database to Wikidata. This is no feature that we
intend to implement. Wikidata can not host whole databases.
Having different licenses for different data
items in Wikidata, as was
suggested here, is not possible, as single data items are not licensable.
My suggestion was that we keep track of licenses for different databases
held in Wikidata, not for each individual item.
Wikidata can not and will not host different databases.
If Wikidata was a collection of databases, like
e.g. OKFN's DataHub, then
it would make sense to provide for different
licenses for each of these
databases. But Wikidata does not have any notion of different databases.
You cannot take a database and simply upload it to Wikidata.
Wikidata can certainly be thought of as a collection of databases (or
parts of databases), regardless of whether Wikidata itself distinguishes
between them.
This is the central issue. Wikidata is *not* a collection of databases.
The notion of different databases does not exist anywhere in Wikidata. It
is not represented in the backend, it is not in the UI, it is nowhere to be
found.
I've only played around a little with
Wikidata, and I'll take your word
for it that simple uploads of databases are impossible. But based on what
Wikidata promises to do, it must still be possible to upload them somehow.
No. For none of the promises of Wikidata is the upload of databases as a
whole necessary.
I hope this clears up some of the raised concerns.
Cheers,
Denny
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