Andrew Gray wrote:
On 11/06/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Precisely why are we stuck with it? If it were an article it would be up for deletion.
We have a choice:
a) Drop the GFDL and pick a better license (ABL). The problem here is that we cannot legitimately use anything that is licensed under GFDL, unless we convince its author(s) to relicense their work under ABL.
Net effect: 98% of Wikipedia articles or so - including virtually every single significant one - have to be abandoned and started again from scratch. We'd only get to keep the ones where we could contact all the contributors (well, all as of a certain revision whose material had not been removed in that revision, and you might have fun arguing that last clause) and get them to relicense their work - in effect, only single-author articles by currently active users.
b) Live with it.
or:
c) since all existing articles are licensed under "Version 1.2 [of the GFDL] or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation", lobby the FSF to make the next version of the GFDL _be_ that better licence.
-- Neil