Sanger has made his first post to the Citizendium list:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2006-September/000000.html
Select quotes and a bit of commentary:
"I have a suggestion from someone very high up in the Creative Commons organization that we should dual-license (CC and GFDL), which I simply hadn't thought of. I'm inclined to think it's a good idea."
I'd like to know how that would be compatible with working from Wikipedia content.
"Speaking of naysayers, sure there have been a few on the blogosphere, but what was especially striking to me is that Wikimedia's lawyer and chief engineer both have said nothing but encouraging things to us. How wonderfully refreshing of them! And huge numbers of people on Slashdot and elsewhere have come out saying that this is a good idea, and that we have every right to do it."
Well, of course! That's what the "free content" bit is for, and I'm interested in seeing how well this one works. I'd actually like to see more projects coming from people who want to differ on some fundamental point; Wikinfo is perhaps the best go at this so far.
"Personally, "Citizendium" rolls right off my tongue."
OK, that part I find hard to believe. :-)
-Kat
On 9/18/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
"I have a suggestion from someone very high up in the Creative Commons organization that we should dual-license (CC and GFDL), which I simply hadn't thought of. I'm inclined to think it's a good idea."
I'd like to know how that would be compatible with working from Wikipedia content.
Technically I think it would only be fine in the terms of content which has been multi-licensed by contributors. Unfortunately I suspect most of the content is not licensed as such (personally I have thought we should require multi-licensing on all new contributions for quite awhile, but nothing has seemed to move in that direction in a systematic, across-the-board sense).
Non-technically speaking, it is clearly within the intent of the GFDL, if not the letter-and-word. But strictly speaking, our use of our own content is not within the letter-and-word of the GFDL, mainly because the letter-and-word of the GFDL does not really lend itself to things like Wikis.
(I think the intent and basic mechanisms of the GFDL are great. I think the implementation is poor. I suspect that anything which implemented the GFDL as poorly as Wikipedia does would not hold up strongly in court.)
Depending on how they mean "dual-use", I think that it would be feasible for Wikipedia to use their content, though.
FF
On 18/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
(I think the intent and basic mechanisms of the GFDL are great. I think the implementation is poor. I suspect that anything which implemented the GFDL as poorly as Wikipedia does would not hold up strongly in court.)
In particular, the GFDL for images is pretty much a pretend free-content licence and not effectively one at all. "Yes, you can freely reuse our images in print if you print the entire text of the licence next to it." Uh, yeah.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 18/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
(I think the intent and basic mechanisms of the GFDL are great. I think the implementation is poor. I suspect that anything which implemented the GFDL as poorly as Wikipedia does would not hold up strongly in court.)
In particular, the GFDL for images is pretty much a pretend free-content licence and not effectively one at all. "Yes, you can freely reuse our images in print if you print the entire text of the licence next to it." Uh, yeah.
Here's a great cartoon explaining this, and why you should dual-license images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:BD-propagande_colour_en.jpg
On 9/19/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote: In particular, the GFDL for images is pretty much a pretend free-content licence and not effectively one at all. "Yes, you can freely reuse our images in print if you print the entire text of the licence next to it." Uh, yeah.
This is why I recommend to people who are anxious about releasing their images under free licenses to use GFDL. Yes, they are technically free, and can be used easily be web pages. But you'll probably never see any print sources bother.
Our GFDL non-compliance goes beyond images, though. If you read over the GFDL very carefully there are all sorts of things that are impractical for a communal encyclopedia to do (i.e. modified versions of works are supposed to have different titles with every modification — not exactly practical when you are all editing the same draft-in-progress).
FF
Fastfission wrote:
On 9/19/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote: In particular, the GFDL for images is pretty much a pretend free-content licence and not effectively one at all. "Yes, you can freely reuse our images in print if you print the entire text of the licence next to it." Uh, yeah.
This is why I recommend to people who are anxious about releasing their images under free licenses to use GFDL. Yes, they are technically free, and can be used easily be web pages. But you'll probably never see any print sources bother.
Our GFDL non-compliance goes beyond images, though. If you read over the GFDL very carefully there are all sorts of things that are impractical for a communal encyclopedia to do (i.e. modified versions of works are supposed to have different titles with every modification — not exactly practical when you are all editing the same draft-in-progress).
FF
Well, I think you could argue that the if the "full" title of an article is taken to include its page name, source site _and_ revision ID, which is certainly required for uniqueness, then the letter of the licence is already met in current practice. See, for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fish&oldid=76478297
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Fish&id=...
Can anyone tell me whether Wikipedia has a formal DOI prefix and scheme already set up?
-- Neil