Hi,
after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE) has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project.
It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles" list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
The EoE seems to be the only special topic encyclopedia that does not cover its own topic itself. There is an article about the http://www.eoearth.org/article/Crude_Oil_Windfall_Profit_Tax_Act_of_1980,_Un... but nothing about Earth (...yet).
The content is licensed under CC-BY-SA, so it is free (as in freedom) but not compatible with the GFDL at present.
I have not counted how many articles are modified versions of text that has already appeared somewhere else:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Meter
"This article is taken wholly from, or contains information that was originally published by, the National Institue of Standards and Technology. Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of Earth may have edited its content or added new information. The use of information from National Institue of Standards and Technology should not be construed as support for or endorsement by that organization for any new information added by EoE personnel, or for any editing of the original content."
In Berlin, I spoke with Larry Sanger from the Digital Universe Foundation. He said (if I remember correctly) that the EoE people have already "written" (maybe including as in cut&pasted from the NIST) over 1000 articles.
You can listen to Larry's answer at http://phalacrocorax.informatik.hu-berlin.de/fr/06_13h_QualityManagementInFr...
90:05 Larry: "The Encyclopedia of Earth is under development. They have over a thousand articles in the wiki but at present it is a semi-closed wiki."
More stats here:
Published Articles 364 Updated in last week 139 Updated in last month 364 Published Topics 53 All Contributors 276 Published Contributors 106 Published Authors 83 Published Topic Editors 30 Published Copyeditors 8 Last Published 22-Sep-2006 20:05:13 UTC (9 minutes ago)
Mathias
On 22/09/06, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE) has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project. It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles" list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
And it's open content, too (cc-by-sa).
A thousand flowers are blooming.
- d.
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedia of Earth appears to be now online... Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:34:48 +0100
On 22/09/06, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE) has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project. It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles" list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
And it's open content, too (cc-by-sa).
A thousand flowers are blooming.
- d.
Is it a WP:Reliable Source as well? Reading their about page - http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about - it seems trustworthy...
Tony (GTBacchus)
On 22/09/06, Tony Jacobs gtjacobs@hotmail.com wrote:
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com
On 22/09/06, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE) has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project. It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles" list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
And it's open content, too (cc-by-sa). A thousand flowers are blooming.
Is it a WP:Reliable Source as well? Reading their about page - http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about - it seems trustworthy...
It's a tertiary source, like any encyclopedia should be. Most (all?) of their actual content so far is repackaged material from NIST, which I presume would be US government Public Domain. I'd call that a reasonable source cited properly.
- d.
On 9/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's a tertiary source, like any encyclopedia should be. Most (all?) of their actual content so far is repackaged material from NIST, which I presume would be US government Public Domain. I'd call that a reasonable source cited properly.
- d.
If possible, we should probably cite NIST itself though. Seems smarter, one less filter...
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles? It wouldn't be very nice, but are there any legal issues associated with it?
--Oskar
On 9/23/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
If possible, we should probably cite NIST itself though. Seems smarter, one less filter...
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles? It wouldn't be very nice, but are there any legal issues associated with it?
--Oskar
Yeah, reading from CCs webpage, I guess not, it says "identical license". A shame, really.
Why couldn't Lessig have invented his damn licenses before we came along?!?!?
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Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Yeah, reading from CCs webpage, I guess not, it says "identical license". A shame, really.
Why couldn't Lessig have invented his damn licenses before we came along?!?!?
Creative Commons was launched in 2001, as was Wikipedia.
Cynical
On 9/23/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
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Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Yeah, reading from CCs webpage, I guess not, it says "identical license". A shame, really.
Why couldn't Lessig have invented his damn licenses before we came along?!?!?
Creative Commons was launched in 2001, as was Wikipedia.
Silly me, i thought CC was launched in 2002
On 23/09/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Yeah, reading from CCs webpage, I guess not, it says "identical license". A shame, really. Why couldn't Lessig have invented his damn licenses before we came along?!?!?
Creative Commons was launched in 2001, as was Wikipedia.
Wikipedia used the same licence as Nupedia, which was started in 2000.
The GFDL is such an *awful* licence for wiki text.
- d.
On 9/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The GFDL is such an *awful* licence for wiki text.
Almost everybody seems to agree that the GFDL doesn't really get the job done.
Is there a reason we haven't worked to implement a new licensing agreement for all edits this-point-on? I raised this once before but I don't think anything ever came of it.
My suggestion: Change the edit-field notice from "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL." to "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL, or a [[similarly free]] license chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation."
"Similarly free" would link to a page explaining that the WMF would be given the right to re-license or multi-license content but only under licenses which met the requirements of "free content" (which we could outline).
We could even make it so that all users would be required to say that all of their previous content released under GFDL was similarly open to multilicensing.
It would only create a minor mess at first. Everything could be assumed released as GFDL. Tools could be developed to scan an article for content which could be released as CC-BY-SA (for example, if it was one of the license approved by WMF).
Anyway. It's an idea. It is one which gives the WMF a lot more flexibility than it currently has, though within the commitments of basic "free content" guidelines which would be inflexible. It allows for future licensing possibilities to ensure freedom and accessibility for the long term (GFDL doesn't work well with printed photographs; who knows what technology of the future would be tied up by some aspect of it?). And at the bare minimum all content would still be GFDL.
It's an idea which does the most work the sooner it is implemented, as well.
Just an idea...
FF
On Sep 24, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Fastfission wrote:
We could even make it so that all users would be required to say that all of their previous content released under GFDL was similarly open to multilicensing.
Which not all users would, including some major contributors.
It would only create a minor mess at first. Everything could be assumed released as GFDL. Tools could be developed to scan an article for content which could be released as CC-BY-SA (for example, if it was one of the license approved by WMF).
Which becomes pure hell when you get to derivative works - particularly when you start with replacing content lost to the scan, and get into a wealth of "Was this based off of my not-CC-licensed paragraph on this topic or not" disputes, any and all of which could become litigious.
It's an idea which does the most work the sooner it is implemented, as well.
I agree. We should implement this sometime around 2001. 2002 at the latest.
-Phil
On 9/24/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Which not all users would, including some major contributors.
One could work around that. Over time things would probably begin to phase towards the multi-licensed versions. If it really came down to it, people would know what content they couldn't use in a non-GFDL way.
In any case, I wonder why major contributors would object. One would not be handing the WMF a blank check -- you'd be just saying that any license which implemented the most important parts of the GFDL would be kosher, par discussion with the WMF. At the very least, the GFDL would still be kosher. Sounds like freedom to me.
Which becomes pure hell when you get to derivative works - particularly when you start with replacing content lost to the scan, and get into a wealth of "Was this based off of my not-CC-licensed paragraph on this topic or not" disputes, any and all of which could become litigious.
I doubt it would become litigious. And considering how much of WP content itself is based on "re-writing" of other sources, I find it unlikely that it would be a big issue of one was "re-writing" a GFDL text so you could release it under CC.
In any case, it would be up to the re-user to figure out, though we could make things easier. The point is that at the very minimum they could assume it was GFDL and treat it as such. It would be up to them to figure out if it qualified for other usage. It opens the possibility for more-free use, whereas the status quo does not.
I agree. We should implement this sometime around 2001. 2002 at the latest.
At the moment we are completely at the whim of the FSF lawyers if we want to make our content more compatible with other licenses. The GFDL, obvious mismash that it is, has not been updated for four years. I don't think it actually gives the kind of freedom that people want for this text -- it binds them up in red tape, confusing and imprecise language, and implementation requirements which are hard even for the best-wishing people to comply with. Personally I consider that to be practically non-free in many respects.
So, you can be snide about it, but I don't think that helps much. Wikipedia grows and grows. The longer we wait, the bigger the problem is. The sooner we act, the more flexibility we'll have in the future.
FF
Fastfission wrote:
I agree. We should implement this sometime around 2001. 2002 at the latest.
At the moment we are completely at the whim of the FSF lawyers if we want to make our content more compatible with other licenses. The GFDL, obvious mismash that it is, has not been updated for four years. I don't think it actually gives the kind of freedom that people want for this text -- it binds them up in red tape, confusing and imprecise language, and implementation requirements which are hard even for the best-wishing people to comply with. Personally I consider that to be practically non-free in many respects.
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten, and the FSF has seemed willing to consult with Wikipedia about its needs during the process (I believe Jimbo has been queried about it). Whether the language will be less of a confusing mish-mash I won't speculate, but the single biggest problem---that you have to print the entire damn license with every copy you distribute---seems likely to be solved.
So I'd personally lean towards waiting to see if the next GFDL is something we can live with, before trying to relicense the whole encyclopedia---a huge and messy undertaking.
-Mark
On 24/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten, and the FSF has seemed willing to consult with Wikipedia about its needs during the process (I believe Jimbo has been queried about it). Whether the language will be less of a confusing mish-mash I won't speculate, but the single biggest problem---that you have to print the entire damn license with every copy you distribute---seems likely to be solved.
This is the first I'd heard that there was actual progress. Excellent!
Are they going to release it for public comment as they did the planned GPL rewrite?
So I'd personally lean towards waiting to see if the next GFDL is something we can live with, before trying to relicense the whole encyclopedia---a huge and messy undertaking.
Yes. The reason the question has even come up is that relicensing was actually looking less painful than continuing with the GFDL and arguably not actually keeping to it.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten, and the FSF has seemed willing to consult with Wikipedia about its needs during the process (I believe Jimbo has been queried about it). Whether the language will be less of a confusing mish-mash I won't speculate, but the single biggest problem---that you have to print the entire damn license with every copy you distribute---seems likely to be solved.
This is the first I'd heard that there was actual progress. Excellent!
Are they going to release it for public comment as they did the planned GPL rewrite?
I must confess I didn't have any actual information on progress; I just sort of assumed that after two years of the process and occasional reports from Jimbo that somebody had asked him something, that it was fairly far along. An alternative would be that it's been stalled for two years. :)
I just emailed licensing@gnu.org about it, though, and got a reply that "the first discussion draft should be out very, very soon". Sounds promising.
-Mark
On 24/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten,
This is the first I'd heard that there was actual progress. Excellent!
Are they going to release it for public comment as they did the planned GPL rewrite?
I am informed by a nice chap on #wikipedia that they've now released the draft GFDL v2:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html
----
The first discussion draft of the GNU Free Documentation License version 2 was released on 2006 September 26, along with a draft of the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License. The new draft of the GNU FDL includes a number of improvements, such as:
* New terms crafted during the GPLv3 process to improve internationalization * Clarifications to help people applying the license to audio and video * Relaxed requirements for using an excerpt from a work
----
I won't have a chance to read it for a while - anyone want to go through it?
On 9/26/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I am informed by a nice chap on #wikipedia that they've now released the draft GFDL v2:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html [snip] I won't have a chance to read it for a while - anyone want to go through it?
I do, I do, though only a quick look for tonight.
For starters, there's a new SFDL (simplified free documentation license). It has no provisions for cover texts and invariant sections. And best of all, under the new GFDL v2: "If the Work has no Cover Texts and no Invariant Sections then you may relicense the Work under the GNU Simpler Free Documentation License."
So this means that Wikipedia, since it is licensed under GFDL v1.2 or any later version (according to [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]], anyway), can be relicensed under GFDL v2 and then rerelicensed under the SFDL (one step, two steps, whatever, it can be done).
So I'm going to ignore the new GFDL, and focus on the new SFDL, because presumably Wikipedia will want to take advantage of this relicensing.
OK, first off in terms of changes is the removal of the requirement to include a copy of the license for verbatim copies. Instead, we have this: "You need not include a copy of this License in the Work if you have registered the work's license with a national agency that maintains a network server through which the general public can find out its license." I don't know what this means, actually, so maybe someone can explain it. Maybe the FSF intends to run one such agency/network? If so, sounds good so far, I guess.
HOWEVER, this is in the section for verbatim copies. The later section for modified copies still says to "H. Include an unaltered copy of this License." Is this a mistake, or is it intentional? We'll have to ask during the discussion period, but considering the section on "excerpts" it seems to be intentional.
There is still a requirement for forks to "Use a title distinct from that of the Work, and from those of previous versions of the Work as listed in the History section." This is problematic if you consider an individual article as "the Work", and not Wikipedia (or the English language Wikipedia) as a whole. Interestingly, the statement that "You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission." has been dropped. Hopefully this is a mistake.
"Title page" has been redefined. It now reads "The "Title Page" means the portion of the work where information such as title, authors, date of publication, and copyright notice would normally appear." So no longer, it seems, will a Wikipedia article be considered to have a title page (it was previously defined as "the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text"). This is significant because two of the requirements for distribution of a modified copy are "List as authors (on the Title Page, if any), one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version." and "Credit (on the Title Page, if any) at least five of the principal authors of the Work (all of them, if it has fewer than five) if the material derived from the Work is more than 1/4 of the total." This was a place where Wikipedia was previously not in compliance with the GFDL, and now it seems they would be.
"Authors and publishers of previous versions can release you from above requirements to cite or refer to them or their versions." This is a good addition, although it should probably be spelled out better *how* this release is done, so that there isn't any ambiguity as to whether or not it has been.
"You may publish a work, a Modified Version, or a collection, of up to 20,000 characters of text (excluding formatting mark-up) in electronic form, or up to 12 normal printed pages, or up to a minute of audio or video, as an Excerpt. An Excerpt follows the applicable rules of this license, except that the following required materials--the copy of this license, title page materials, historical copyright notices, warranty disclaimers, and any required sections--may be replaced by one or more publicly accessible URLs referring to the same materials." This is a wholly new section. A minute of audio seems too short, though. Presumably almost all images released under the GFDL would be completely exempt as they wouldn't have 20,000 characters of text in them. That's good too.
Overall, it looks like a major improvement. I'll take a closer look tomorrow, and hopefully some more people will have already commented by then (and hopefully my email will have gotten through the moderation queue by then).
Anthony
On 9/26/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I am informed by a nice chap on #wikipedia that they've now released the draft GFDL v2:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html
I won't have a chance to read it for a while - anyone want to go through it?
Oops, I guess moderation is good for something. I went through a long explanation of the new SFDL, then I saw this:
"If the Work was previously published, with no Cover Texts, no Invariant Sections, and no Acknowledgements or Dedications or Endorsements section, in a system for massive public collaboration under version 1.2 of this License, and if all the material in the Work was either initially developed in that collaboration system or had been imported into it before 1 June 2006, then you may relicense the Work under the GNU Wiki License."
Now, what is the GNU Wiki License?
Anthony
Andrew Gray wrote:
I won't have a chance to read it for a while - anyone want to go through it?
I haven't gone through it in detail, but a few things that pop out:
Section 2: Verbatim copies of the entire work now no longer need to include a copy of the GFDL if the redistributors: "have registered the work's license with a national agency that maintains a network server through which the general public can find out its license." -- I'm not too sure what this means. Do such registries even exist?
Section 2: There is new anti-DRM language -- Seems reasonable.
Section 4, point b: For derived works, the primary author of the modified version must now be listed on the title page, in addition to the previous requirement that the publisher of the modified version be thus listed. -- Not sure what the impetus for this change is, but I don't see a problem with it.
Section 4, point c: The requirement to credit on the title page the 5 principal authors of the version you derived from is waived if the version you derived from constitutes no more than 1/4 of your derived work. You must still maintain all authors' copyright notices, and the history section, but may put their names somewhere other than the title page in this case. -- Seems reasonable, although I don't care that much either way.
Section 6a: Excerpts, defined as anything up to 20,000 characters of text (excluding markup) or 12 normal printed pages, or a minute of audio or video, may have essentially all the required information (license, title page, history, etc.) linked via a URL instead of distributed with the work itself. -- The most relevant to Wikipedia; this would greatly ease publishing things like info sheets and pamphlets. I'd personally be inclined to even up the limits a bit, to maybe 20 pages. Should also be extended to include photographs, IMO.
-Mark
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 24/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten,
This is the first I'd heard that there was actual progress. Excellent!
Are they going to release it for public comment as they did the planned GPL rewrite?
I am informed by a nice chap on #wikipedia that they've now released the draft GFDL v2:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html
The first discussion draft of the GNU Free Documentation License version 2 was released on 2006 September 26, along with a draft of the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License. The new draft of the GNU FDL includes a number of improvements, such as:
* New terms crafted during the GPLv3 process to improve internationalization * Clarifications to help people applying the license to audio and video * Relaxed requirements for using an excerpt from a work
I won't have a chance to read it for a while - anyone want to go through it?
See Gmaxwell's post on Foundation-l.
Delirium said:
While this is all true, the GFDL *is* fairly far along the process of being rewritten, and the FSF has seemed willing to consult with Wikipedia about its needs during the process (I believe Jimbo has been queried about it).
[...]
So I'd personally lean towards waiting to see if the next GFDL is something we can live with, before trying to relicense the whole encyclopedia---a huge and messy undertaking.
Exactly, I think that the best thing to do is to try to negotiate with the FSF. A change in a new version of GFDL would be ideal, as it would affect instantly all the current content of Wikipedia and we'd avoid the licensing hell by having just one license.
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Fastfission wrote:
On 9/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The GFDL is such an *awful* licence for wiki text.
Almost everybody seems to agree that the GFDL doesn't really get the job done.
Is there a reason we haven't worked to implement a new licensing agreement for all edits this-point-on? I raised this once before but I don't think anything ever came of it.
My suggestion: Change the edit-field notice from "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL." to "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL, or a [[similarly free]] license chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation."
"Similarly free" would link to a page explaining that the WMF would be given the right to re-license or multi-license content but only under licenses which met the requirements of "free content" (which we could outline).
We could even make it so that all users would be required to say that all of their previous content released under GFDL was similarly open to multilicensing.
It would only create a minor mess at first. Everything could be assumed released as GFDL. Tools could be developed to scan an article for content which could be released as CC-BY-SA (for example, if it was one of the license approved by WMF).
Anyway. It's an idea. It is one which gives the WMF a lot more flexibility than it currently has, though within the commitments of basic "free content" guidelines which would be inflexible. It allows for future licensing possibilities to ensure freedom and accessibility for the long term (GFDL doesn't work well with printed photographs; who knows what technology of the future would be tied up by some aspect of it?). And at the bare minimum all content would still be GFDL.
It's an idea which does the most work the sooner it is implemented, as well.
Just an idea...
FF
1. You can't legally require anyone to relicence their work just because you decide you don't like the terms any more. They would be perfectly entitled to say 'fuck you' (or some lawyer-approved legalese equivalent) to the WMF 2. Making all future contributions multi-licenceable would create two problems: a) New contributions may be licence-incompatible with new ones b) A great deal of contributors would go to Citizendium instead
Cynical
On 24/09/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
- You can't legally require anyone to relicence their work just because
you decide you don't like the terms any more. They would be perfectly entitled to say 'fuck you' (or some lawyer-approved legalese equivalent) to the WMF
Indeed. For a real-life example, the Mozilla Foundation wanted to relicense all MPL code with the GPL and LGPL as well, and I think is *still* tracking down contributors whose code they want to relicense. The alternative is rewriting, which is just painful.
- Making all future contributions multi-licenceable would create two
problems: a) New contributions may be licence-incompatible with new ones
eh?
b) A great deal of contributors would go to Citizendium instead
At last status report I was aware of, Citizendium is still debating the license for its new works and may dual-licence with cc-by-sa.
- d.
On 9/24/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. For a real-life example, the Mozilla Foundation wanted to relicense all MPL code with the GPL and LGPL as well, and I think is *still* tracking down contributors whose code they want to relicense. The alternative is rewriting, which is just painful.
But unlike Mozilla it is easy to use only parts of an encyclopedia. New articles would be instantly under the new license. (And how many new articles a day are we talking about, again?)
And again, at the very minimum, GFDL would still be in place. This would just open up the possibility of future multilicensing. If it really did become a hassle, one could just as similarly say "The WMF has not designated any licenses other than the GFDL for redistribution" and we haven't changed the status quo one bit, but at least had the option to try.
FF
On 24/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. For a real-life example, the Mozilla Foundation wanted to relicense all MPL code with the GPL and LGPL as well, and I think is *still* tracking down contributors whose code they want to relicense. The alternative is rewriting, which is just painful.
But unlike Mozilla it is easy to use only parts of an encyclopedia. New articles would be instantly under the new license. (And how many new articles a day are we talking about, again?) And again, at the very minimum, GFDL would still be in place. This would just open up the possibility of future multilicensing. If it really did become a hassle, one could just as similarly say "The WMF has not designated any licenses other than the GFDL for redistribution" and we haven't changed the status quo one bit, but at least had the option to try.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just seeing a lack of actual momentum for it, and I'm not sure how to start some myself.
IMO the sooner the GFDL is deprecated the better. But anyway.
- d.
On 9/24/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just seeing a lack of actual momentum for it, and I'm not sure how to start some myself.
IMO the sooner the GFDL is deprecated the better. But anyway.
- d.
Talking to the FSF is the only realistic option. The problem with duel lisenceing is that you could potentialy end up with situations where wikipedia would be unable to use modified versions on it's content because the person chose to use it under CC only and never released the modification under the GFDL
On 24/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just seeing a lack of actual momentum for it, and I'm not sure how to start some myself. IMO the sooner the GFDL is deprecated the better. But anyway.
Talking to the FSF is the only realistic option.
RMS's famous intransigence is his most admirable characteristic and also his most bloody annoying. I keep finding he's right about things he said five or ten years ago that were considered silly at the time, so I'm sure his wisdom with refusing to move the GFDL an inch toward CC-by-sa compatibility is well thought out.
But it's still bloody painful, and painful enough that this dual licencing effort followed by deprecation of the GFDL might actually be less painful..
The problem with duel lisenceing is that you could potentialy end up with situations where wikipedia would be unable to use modified versions on it's content because the person chose to use it under CC only and never released the modification under the GFDL
Yes.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Talking to the FSF is the only realistic option.
RMS's famous intransigence is his most admirable characteristic and also his most bloody annoying. I keep finding he's right about things he said five or ten years ago that were considered silly at the time, so I'm sure his wisdom with refusing to move the GFDL an inch toward CC-by-sa compatibility is well thought out.
Well, the FSF is in a delicate position with these sorts of things. Licensing something under "... or any later version published by the FSF" is a very unusual sort of thing to do---you're giving the FSF the authority to unilaterally relicense your stuff. People only do it because they trust the FSF to uphold the meaning of the licenses, and only change them to amend technical errors, close unforseen loopholes, and so on. If people were worried that the FSF would make more substantive changes to the license that they might disagree with, then they'd start licensing things under a specific version. That would limit flexibility, since then not even the FSF could fix any situations that arose.
So from both an ethical and practical perspective, the FSF has a strong need to keep new license versions as close to old ones as possible, and so is naturally quite conservative with its changes.
That said, I do hope the new version makes some significant practical improvements while maintaining the spirit and general mechanisms of the current one.
-Mark
On 9/24/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: RMS's famous intransigence is his most admirable characteristic and also his most bloody annoying. I keep finding he's right about things he said five or ten years ago that were considered silly at the time, so I'm sure his wisdom with refusing to move the GFDL an inch toward CC-by-sa compatibility is well thought out.
How well thought out it is largely irrelevant. It's pretty clear that content creators are using CC. If it wasn't for wikipedia GFDL would be rapidly heading in the direction of being a historical curiosity a bit like the free art licence.
But it's still bloody painful, and painful enough that this dual licencing effort followed by deprecation of the GFDL might actually be less painful..
I doubt it. Generaly getting into an even messier situation can only cause problems.
On 9/24/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
- You can't legally require anyone to relicence their work just because
you decide you don't like the terms any more. They would be perfectly entitled to say 'fuck you' (or some lawyer-approved legalese equivalent) to the WMF
Legally? Who said anything about legally? We'd just be asking. Or perhaps make it part of the conditions of use for the site.
You can't legally require anyone to release their content under the GFDL. But we require it nonetheless for participants.
- Making all future contributions multi-licenceable would create two
problems: a) New contributions may be licence-incompatible with new ones b) A great deal of contributors would go to Citizendium instead
a. Multi-licensing doesn't have to mean exclusive licensing. I can say, "My contributions are licensed GFDL, or CC-BY-SA. You can pick the one which works best for you." Everything would be, at a minimum, GFDL. I don't see compatibility within the project as a problem. b. Why? Who cares? Is this really a threat -- a non-existant Wiki-to-be which requires credentials? Can we, for a moment now, at least stick with known problems, rather than making up new ones relating to what is currently Ghostware?
FF
On 9/24/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
- You can't legally require anyone to relicence their work just because
you decide you don't like the terms any more. They would be perfectly entitled to say 'fuck you' (or some lawyer-approved legalese equivalent) to the WMF
Legally? Who said anything about legally? We'd just be asking. Or perhaps make it part of the conditions of use for the site.
You can't legally require anyone to release their content under the GFDL. But we require it nonetheless for participants.
- Making all future contributions multi-licenceable would create two
problems: a) New contributions may be licence-incompatible with new ones b) A great deal of contributors would go to Citizendium instead
a. Multi-licensing doesn't have to mean exclusive licensing. I can say, "My contributions are licensed GFDL, or CC-BY-SA. You can pick the one which works best for you." Everything would be, at a minimum, GFDL. I don't see compatibility within the project as a problem. b. Why? Who cares? Is this really a threat -- a non-existant Wiki-to-be which requires credentials? Can we, for a moment now, at least stick with known problems, rather than making up new ones relating to what is currently Ghostware?
FF
First, I agree that this is something we need to do, and obviously as soon as possible.
The biggest problem will probably not be with "major contributors" but with anons... the large majority of articles contain substantive contributions from anons that we can't even track down to ask permission from.
I wonder if it would be possible to simply declare, by fiat, that previous anonymous contributions will be relicensed? Since we don't, technically, follow the GFDL as it is, and other free licenses are clearly consistent with the spirit of free content that any contributor implicitly agrees to, it shouldn't be that big a deal.
The remaining problem would be outside text for which explicit permission was obtained to license it under the GFDL for Wikipedia. The owners of such content might conceivably get upset (and litigious) over it. As a minimum safeguard, we would need to, by default, not mulit-license any given existing entry until it was checked over for such potentially problematic content (or content from editors who refused to multi-license, but that could be done automatically).
-Ragesoss
On 24/09/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if it would be possible to simply declare, by fiat, that previous anonymous contributions will be relicensed?
Probably not legally safe, and almost certainly not ethically safe or public-relations safe.
Since we don't, technically, follow the GFDL as it is,
Possibly. At present it's a can of worms mostly dealt with by not opening it.
and other free licenses are clearly consistent with the spirit of free content that any contributor implicitly agrees to, it shouldn't be that big a deal.
All we need is a few such IP editors saying "I edited from that IP which I can show I own and owned then, and I say HOW DARE YOU SIR" and we have actual trouble.
The remaining problem would be outside text for which explicit permission was obtained to license it under the GFDL for Wikipedia. The owners of such content might conceivably get upset (and litigious) over it. As a minimum safeguard, we would need to, by default, not mulit-license any given existing entry until it was checked over for such potentially problematic content (or content from editors who refused to multi-license, but that could be done automatically).
Every entry to be declared 'hereby multilicensed' would need to be given that status one at a time.
- d.
On 9/24/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The GFDL is such an *awful* licence for wiki text.
Almost everybody seems to agree that the GFDL doesn't really get the job done.
Is there a reason we haven't worked to implement a new licensing agreement for all edits this-point-on? I raised this once before but I don't think anything ever came of it.
Well, a big part of the reason this issue hasn't been resolved is that we kept getting told that the FSF was looking into resolving the issues of the GFDL in an upcoming version. So far this hasn't happened.
My suggestion: Change the edit-field notice from "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL." to "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL, or a [[similarly free]] license chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation."
"Similarly free" would link to a page explaining that the WMF would be given the right to re-license or multi-license content but only under licenses which met the requirements of "free content" (which we could outline).
An interesting concept... But one should note that CC-BY for instance is a license which meets the requirements of "free content", and there are a number of people who would probably be opposed to such a relicensing.
Anthony
On 9/24/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
An interesting concept... But one should note that CC-BY for instance is a license which meets the requirements of "free content", and there are a number of people who would probably be opposed to such a relicensing.
Anthony
Precisely. Such an agreement would have to be very carefully worded, I mean if something is in the public domain it's free content, and I don't want my edits released into the public domain (not really under CC-BY either, atleast not without asking me). I trust WMF, but I don't want that to happen.
And this still doesn't solve the issue of all the old edits, you would have to relicense them too, otherwise you couldn't have a freer license for newer edits (the GFDL would prohibit it)
Let's face it: the only way were getting away from the GFDL is if FSF updates it. No other way is going to work.
--Oskar
On 9/23/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles?
No. CC-BY-SA and GFDL are currently not compatible. If the article is just a verbatim copy of a PD-US-GOV text, CC restrictions do not apply. Same thing, if the changes are far to few to be considered significant.
Mathias
Mathias Schindler wrote:
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles?
No. CC-BY-SA and GFDL are currently not compatible.
There is some prospect that they will become compatible at some point in the future, but my understanding currently (we investigated for Wikimania) is that it would involve some changes to the GFDL that the FSF's lawyers are uncertain about, so I wouldn't hold out hope of this happening any time soon.
Cheers,
N.
On 9/22/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles? It wouldn't be very nice, but are there any legal issues associated with it?
The thing is, legal issues aside, unless EoE allows original research (I haven't looked to know), everything published on EoE *should*, in theory, be based on a source, which we could use directly instead of through EoE (I say in theory because I imagine that there would be the same sourcing issues unless there is a tighter content control). And even if EoE did allow original research, is that something we would want in Wikipedia -- original research from an essentially non-peer-reviewed source? I see the same problems in citing (and especially copying) EoE as I do in citing another Wikipedia article as an authoritative source.
Carl
On 9/23/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/22/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
Since it is CC-BY-SA, can we... ehm... "borrow" stuff from these articles? It wouldn't be very nice, but are there any legal issues associated with it?
The thing is, legal issues aside, unless EoE allows original research (I haven't looked to know), everything published on EoE *should*, in theory, be based on a source, which we could use directly instead of through EoE (I say in theory because I imagine that there would be the same sourcing issues unless there is a tighter content control). And even if EoE did allow original research, is that something we would want in Wikipedia -- original research from an essentially non-peer-reviewed source? I see the same problems in citing (and especially copying) EoE as I do in citing another Wikipedia article as an authoritative source.
Carl
Well you could argue the same thing about the 1911 EB, but we borrow liberally from that (granted, the sources would be pretty old, but still).
--Oskar