Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
The GNU FDL is a complicated mess. The sooner we can be free of it, the
better.
IMO.
It's basically impossible to change the license at this point; since all writers still own the copyrights to their material, every single one of them would have to be contacted and agree to the change of license.
Each of them agreed to license their work either under the GNU FDL 1.1 "or any later version" or the GNU FDL 1.2 "or any later version." If the GNU FDL 2.0 allows transfer to another free content license (such as the FCL I proposed), then that is fine.
Oh right, there is a later versions provision. Seems dicey to allow a change to a different license, potentially opens up major loopholes; dunno if any FSF folks would go for that.
Free content is supposed to be freely used - it is absurd that it cannot be transfered from one free content license to another. Those licenses that are very similar, such as the CC by-sa and the GNU FDL (when no invariant sections are used) should be made compatible with each other. The Free Content License would act as a simplified FDL and compatibility layer (the FSF has already stated that invariant sections are going to stay part of the FDL, so that is a non-starter).
Our only out is a change in the license and the only people who can do that are in the Free Software Foundation.
If you remember, the original motivation was manuals that were available on the net but whose license was phrased so that they were not fixable; the thing to think about is whether a proposed change can be exploited by the unscrupulous. At about the point that GNU became commercially valuable, shady characters came out of the woodwork with all kinds of schemes, and you can see that people are starting to probe the limits of WP licensing. It will get worse when cheaters with money start paying lawyers to look for weaknesses in the license.
Stan