On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org>
wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious
facts in an encyclopedia
article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
obvious.
(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas
Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can
see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".
At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which
absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need
not be referenced by an individual footnote.
What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions,
such
as the example Jimmy was talking about.
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being
"viral"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F>,
based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under
the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is?
Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging
in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Anthony
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Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU
General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that
incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself
become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is
distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely
available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the
GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization
making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent
commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to
distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product
rather than just the cost of distribution.
Speech Transcript - Craig Mundie, The New York University Stern School
of Business
Prepared Text of Remarks by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President
The Commercial Software Model
The New York University Stern School of Business
May 3, 2001
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