On 02/04/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/04/2008, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
Also, just for interest sake, why was the following edit made [1] ... when it is clear that it is allowed previously anyway. In the future will people be told that Wikipedia is licensed under "version 2.2 or later" or "1.3 or later" when it is clear some contributions are inevitably available under 1.1 and it should be clear that it is 1.1 or later. Using "or later" or unilaterally changing the base version doesn't invalidate ones right to interpret the prior versions as binding on text contributed under them. (Interestingly that change was made after the Bomis collection copyright notice was removed so it is unclear who has the copyright on the collection in order to possibly delegitimise the use of 1.1 to interpret text contributed pre that date, and text modified post that date)
Remember, Wikipedia is a user of the content just like anyone else is. It can use the content under any license it's been released under. The content which was released early on when we used 1.1 can be used under 1.1 or 1.2, Wikipedia chooses to use it under 1.2. That doesn't stop other people using it under 1.1 if they want to (they may have difficultly working out what content is available under that version, but that's not Wikipedia's problem [at least, not legally speaking]).
Technically if you obscure the fact that previous contributions were made under version 1.1, then you are saying that you don't consider any to be available under 1.1. Wikipedia doesn't have the right to change the "or later" clause to suit its purposes really. It is accepting contributions under a perceived contract and it should put them out under the same. If any user could reinterpret contracts like that than a future version may be produced which may not suit an author who wanted to stay with version 1.1 or 1.2 and it is not up to wikipedia to say they can't, or imply they can't.
On the other hand, there is the possibility that wikipedia could say they are offering all content under a single specific license, and not "version or later", and they would seem to be fine. It is only the bumping out of old versions that worries me as the author could still legitimately download a copy of the information under version 1.1 if it was derived from before the license bump. It is actually pretty simple to figure out, a simple check to see whether the contribution was made before wikipedia changed to 1.2 should be sufficient.
The text at the bottom of the page with a reference to another page which adds conditions is still quite unclear to me. If the following were at the bottom of each page it would eliminate the necessity to go to another page to discover that the license linked on the page contains an optional restriction which wikipedia uses.
"All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.1 or later with no invariant sections."
Peter