Fastfission wrote:
I agree. We should implement this sometime around 2001. 2002 at the latest.
At the moment we are completely at the whim of the FSF lawyers if we want to make our content more compatible with other licenses. The GFDL, obvious mismash that it is, has not been updated for four years. I don't think it actually gives the kind of freedom that people want for this text -- it binds them up in red tape, confusing and imprecise language, and implementation requirements which are hard even for the best-wishing people to comply with. Personally I consider that to be practically non-free in many respects.
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten, and the FSF has seemed willing to consult with Wikipedia about its needs during the process (I believe Jimbo has been queried about it). Whether the language will be less of a confusing mish-mash I won't speculate, but the single biggest problem---that you have to print the entire damn license with every copy you distribute---seems likely to be solved.
So I'd personally lean towards waiting to see if the next GFDL is something we can live with, before trying to relicense the whole encyclopedia---a huge and messy undertaking.
-Mark