On 01/04/2008, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Makes you wonder how a GPL programme with GFDL
encyclopaedia data and
possibly CC images which all in themselves are free, got to be so
messed up despite its progress so far.
History and people choosing to reinvent the wheel (to be fair the
alternative would be trying to work with Richard M. Stallman to
improve the triangular wheel).
Things are getting better the Open Audio License has merged with
CC-BY-SA and the GFDL is heading in that direction.
The situation is far worse with NC licenses. You can't move for
homebrew NC licenses which are not compatible and are so badly worded
that it is pretty much impossible to work out their legal meaning.
Maybe the whole free culture
thing is really a joke as the people who declare it don't have the
monetary resources to enforce it or even decide themselves what status
compilations are.
There are significant interests in seeing the compilations issue not
settled. Wikipedia for one. Enforcing the GFDL would be doable but for
various reasons there is little point in stealing something already
widely available. It has happened but the person doing it normally
gets fired shortly afterwards so little point in going to court. Since
very little GFDL material is registered with the US copyright office
any damaged awarded would be pretty minimal.
Not to mention that like a few others, I allow all of
my contributions
to be CC BY-SA/GFDL dual liccensed :)... I do like the trend on the
non-Wikimedia parts of the web to make all free culture items CC based
though. Gets away from the horrid complexities of the GFDL programme
documentation focused license so at least you have a hope of clearly
making up your own mind that your data can easily be entrenched in
someone elses site. Did wikipedia really think GFDL was going to
spread through the web given its complexity?
At the time wikipedia was making the decision the only alternatives
would have been a software license the Design Science License and the
Free Art license (and technically the nupedia license but I've never
seen a copy). Design Science License is dead and the Free Art license
has it's own problems.
The wikipedia foundation really has made sure they
believe doublethink
completely without question in this respect if they make it look for
all purposes like wikipedia is free culture but then copyright the
basic aspects so you ironically can't use "it", just the data... It is
interesting that they have so many copyright elements though in a
serious sense too. Makes you wonder what exactly they fear from
copyleft and why they can put on a straight doublethink face for the
media who don't understand these nuances.
In the monobook skin the only elements not under a free license of
some sort are the wikipedia globe the wikimedia foundation logo and
perhaps bits of the mediawiki logo (the mediawiki flower is PD).
--
geni