> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week
> Larry Sanger: "The conclusion you are trying to establish is that
> we cannot
> relicense our versions of Wikipedia articles with GFDL and CC. Why
> not?
> Does the GFDL explicitly forbid licensing works under another
> license in
> addition?"
>
> Is he seriously suggesting that they can basically just license our
> works
> under whatever license they please as long as they also license it
> under the
> GFDL?
>
> I can't believe they've gone 'live' without even sorting out basic
> copyright
> issues... CZ is a joke.
IANAL... IANAIPL.. but I read Slashdot a lot (isn't that just as
good?) and I don't remember any headlines saying "Supreme court
decides in favor of GPL!" Even the GPL is a bit up in the air.
Now, the GFDL... I don't think there's any really big, important
project _except_ Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia has ever
engaged in any lawsuits in which the GFDL played any kind of role
whatsoever. The GFDL is so legally puzzling that Wikipedia itself
can't give nice, simple, crystal-clear rules on how to re-use
Wikipedia content. Nobody understand what the attribution and history
rules really mean and what does or does not satisfy them in practice.
And none of what anyone thinks they might understand has ever been
tested in court.
Suppose Citizendium does go ahead and reuse big chunks of Wikipedia
under some complicated legal mishmash of a license, and let's suppose
the essence of the situation is that a) in a broad sort of way,
Citizendium allows free-as-in-freedom re-use; b) Wikipedia, the Free
Software Foundation, and the EFF all agree that whatever Citizendium
is doing can be characterized as a "free license."
Who the heck is going to sue Citizendium? Nobody has a big stake in
their Wikipedia contributions. There's no money involved. And so many
of the issues involve other licenses being _less_ free than GFDL.
Who is going to pay the big lawyers' fees? And pay for a photographer
to take the twenty-five eight-by-ten color photographs with arrows
and a paragraph on the back to bring to court, showing which
paragraphs were in which versions of what when under which license?
And there probably isn't even anything resembling a case _until a
third party re-uses Citizendium content_.
"Your honor, this print publisher will testify that they WOULD have
published a print book based on Citizendium content, and it WOULD
have included MY paragraphs, if Citizendium hadn't used a
noncommercial license. And if they had, they would have paid me
exactly nothing at all. And I've been terribly hurt by the fact that
they don't have the _potential_ to reuse my work without paying me.
Or maybe they do, but they aren't sure they do, because the
Citizendium license is so tangled and murky and self-contradictory.
So I've been deprived of the precious opportunity to see my name in
print and to get paid nothing for it. Unless they use the Wikipedia
version, of course, which they don't want to do because, they just
don't."
And the other side says "Your honor, please ask the plaintiff, Horace
Wadsworth Pennypacker II, SSN 078-05-1120, to _prove_ that he is
indeed user 'Pfiffltriggi.'"
The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have
Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I
don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince
the Wikimedia Foundation to do it.
And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your
contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against
Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from
_me._