On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 21:23, Alex T. wrote: [a whole bunch of stuff]
Alex, every version of every page that has been released under the FDL through this project *has been released under the FDL*. It can be redistributed by anyone who received it under that license, and Wikipedia's servers continue to redistribute them under that license as part of Wikipedia.
It is the very essence of what we're trying to do that material from the project can be reused and redistributed under that same free license. To claim that this should be taken away after another revision has been made is to pervert the system, to demolish the community editing system, to strangle the right to fork, to pull the rug of liberty from under the feet of reuse.
In short, I can only assume we're misunderstanding each other badly, because I can't believe anyone would try to make the argument that legitimately edited, publically released, FDL-licensed past revisions are no longer redistributable under the terms of the license that they have been released to the world under. That would be to argue against everything this project stands for.
The arguments about it being _unfair_ to later contributors to not use their work don't make any sense to me, and appear to explicitly reject what the project's use of the FDL license explicitly embraces: the ability to reuse and if desired separately develop free encyclopedia materials under a free license.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)