On 8/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That
doesn't contain any of the stuff you're calling part of the
document. It doesn't contain the history information, it doesn't
contain the GFDL, it doesn't contain the license notice, or a
copyright notice - it doesn't even contain the title page.
The spirit of the license is that a transparent copy is one that is
easily editable. The parts you're saying aren't included are parts
which have to be preserved, so there is no need for them to be
editable.
My problem is not with editing them, my problem is with accessing
them. I can't preserve them if I can't find them.
The spirit of the license is that I should be able to fork a Wikipedia
article. In fact, the right to fork is, in my opinion, the most
important right granted by the GFDL. If I can't access a Transparent
version of the Document, I can't fork it. I can edit it within
Wikipedia, perhaps, if I haven't been banned, but the GFDL isn't
supposed to restrict you to editing the Document on a single website.
While the exact wording may require the
history to be editable, you aren't allow to edit it (beyond adding
your name, which is done automatically), so that's a pretty pointless
bit of pedantry.
It's not pedantry at all. If I want to create a fork of a Wikipedia
article, I need a Transparent copy of the entire document. I don't
want to go hunting through page after page of history and what links
here and all the other stuff I need in order to comply with the
license. I want to download a copy of the entire document in a
straightforward way, make my edits, add my name to the title page, add
a line to the history section, and be done with it. I can't do that
with Wikipedia articles, and that's a major material breach of both
the word and the spirit of the GFDL.
A possible alternative is to consider the
database
dumps to be the transparent copy, they aren't as easy to edit, though.
They would also require you to treat the entire database as a single
Document. This approach brings us closer to compliance on many parts
of the GFDL, but has problems with others. We can go over that
approach if you'd like, but you've gotta pick one definition of the
Document and stick with it - you can't go back and forth.
No, you could consider the database to be a collection of lots of
documents. I don't think the license says the transparent copy has to
be available on its own.
That's another definition too, and yes, you could define things that
way. But you'd run into all sorts of problems doing that. The
database dump doesn't even have a section entitled History, for one.
"A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the
general public, that is suitable for revising the document
straightforwardly"
The database dumps are absolutely not suitable for revising the
document straightforwardly.
I think
it's unclear whether or not the WMF is the publisher. But the
WMF isn't listed on the title page anyway.
Well, the "title page" says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
I
would say the WMF is the publisher and is working under the name
"Wikipedia". The license doesn't define the word "publisher"
anywhere,
so I think the everyday meaning of the word is what is meant.
I, on the other hand, think it's clear that this tagline is not meant
to be an acknowledgement of the publisher. Besides the fact that the
WMF claims it isn't the publisher and that they aren't registered as
doing business under the name "Wikipedia", the fact that the other
projects use a different tagline (or no tagline) also lends to the
common sense conclusion that this is a tagline, and not an
acknowledgement of the publisher.