New subject: Escaping the GFDL -- can it be done?

2 Mar 2006


      And now... for something completely different.
The GFDL is a document with great goals, great principles, and I agree
with all of the basic elements of Free Content. Let's just get that on
the table first. I've read quite a lot of Stallman's texts, and works
by other players in these sorts of debates like Lessig, Raymond,
Boyle, etc., and I think I understand the terms of the debates over
this, and some of the legal aspects, though I don't claim to be an
expert in either domain.
But there are some ways in which it is not ideal in its
implementation. Some of these have been gone over in some detail on
here, but the basic summary is that it is a license made primarily for
software manuals and is not always best adapted for Wikipedia's
specific technical and informational purposes. There are, to say the
least, sections which could be clarified, improved, or dropped
altogether. And there are also places where we could imagine
improvements added (such as allowing authors to be dis-associated with
re-used content if used in a way which would be defamatory to them --
the old case of the Holocaust deniers using our articles as a base for
their own literature and then claiming that Jimbo was an author).
But how to escape? The GFDL is viral -- once you license something as
it, you can't undo it. What is made GFDL stays GFDL -- that's the
purpose anyway. And, in principle, I agree with that: the goal of this
is to make sure that what was "free content" not only stays "free
content," but generates more "free content." And it improves
Wikipedia's credibility to be committed to a license maintained by an
external source: nobody can claim that someday WP will turn around,
change its license, and suddenly have proprietary content. In order to
accomplish that at present, we'd have to do a hostile takeover of the
Free Software Foundation. Let's assume, our of the principles of
practicality and good faith, that this will never be an option on the
table.
So how to escape?, he asks again. I've been puzzling over this for
some time (think of it as on of my hobbies, the sort of thing I muse
about in the shower). Here are some thoughts I had.
The idea of multi-licensing has been pursued on the project at
different times, whereby contributions are indicates as being
licenseable under the GFDL or another, similarly "free" license (i.e.,
CC-BY-SA or CC-SA). There was also the big push, awhile ago, to get
users to put templates on their user pages indicating that their
present, future, and, I think, *past* contributions were
multi-licensed as well -- I believe it had to do with making certain
articles compatible with WikiCities' license. The basic idea was to
run a bot to find all of the "authors" the articles in question and
see if they would agree to this. I don't know how this worked out, but
it was an interesting idea.
Based on this principle: can one really ask users to
re-(multi)-license their PAST contributions? That is, can I say, "All
those contributions I said were under the GFDL? Well, now I want them
to also be GFDL or CC-BY-SA." Legally, I'm suspicious, but I'm also
not a lawyer.
If this principle works -- couldn't we change the terms of use? That
is, instead of every edit being licenseable under the GFDL, couldn't
we change it to say that "this contribution, and any other
contribution I have previously made, is licenseable under the GFDL or
any other similarly 'free' license"? It wouldn't necessarily get *all*
of the content out of the GFDL but, if we assume that many of the
editors now were editors previously, it would potentially "free up" a
very large amount of content. If an individual editor objected to this
for some reason (I can't imagine why, but let's just say they did),
then they'd be prohibited from editing, the same way we do when people
suddenly claim that the intent to retain copyright on their edits.
It is just a thought I had -- the only one I could come up with which
seems really plausible, aside from the possibility of the FSF being
convinced to make updates to the GFDL (which I suspect they would be
very dubious about, especially if the edits were primarily to benefit
Wikipedia).
Just a thought, not a clarion call. Getting out of the GFDL may not
even be necessary, but I think thinking about it as an option might be
worthwhile (though again, not because I disagree with its principles
in the slightest, just some aspects of its implementation).
I'm very interested in what others will have to say about this, and
hopefully it will be seen in the spirit I intend it, which is more on
the level of inquiry than policy.
FF

Escaping the GDFL -- can it be done?