Wikimedia-l November 2017

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

105 participants
60 discussions

30 Jan '18

I've been a bit out of the loop on this for a while, so please be kind to the oldbie - what's current Wikimedia policy on adaptive reuse of Wikipedia content into non-free publications? E.g. Graphiq https://www.graphiq.com/terms-and-conditions http://colleges.startclass.com/l/1929/Harvard-University and Google https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+university I recognize that Google gives Wikimedia a lot of money, even if the foundation isn't very transparent about that, but I'd think that doesn't free the company from following CC BY-SA.

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Wikimedia Finland's new board
by Tia Kangaspunta 15 Dec '17

15 Dec '17

Wikimedia Suomi, the national Wikimedia Chapter of Finland, is happy to announce the board for 2018. Continuing members are Minna Turtiainen, Teemu Perhiö and Tero Toivanen. New members selected are Hanna Mäki and Jaakko Pirinen. Heikki Kastemaa was selected as the president of the chapter. Best regards, Tia Kangaspunta Coordinator Wikimedia Suomi (WMFI)

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You can now vote in the Community Wishlist Survey
by Johan Jönsson 11 Dec '17

11 Dec '17

Hey everyone, The voting phase of the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has now started. Read the proposals and support the ones you want to support to make the wikis better: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2017_Community_Wishlist_Survey Click on the categories to find the proposals. The voting will close on December 10. That's the important part of this email. Feel free to follow the link above and starting voting right now. The longer version: The Community Wishlist Survey decides what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team will work on over the next year. The team is responsible for addressing the top 10 wishes on the list, as well as some wishes from smaller groups and projects that are doing important work, but don't have the numbers to get their proposal into the top 10. The Wishlist is also used by volunteer developers and other teams, who want to find projects to work on that the community really wants. Come help set the agenda. If you want to see what the team has done in 2017, see the status report from last month: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Status_repor… What you can do now: *) Vote. This is the most important thing. *) Spread the word. We really want people to find this, of course, and we'll work on finding the best balance between spreading the news to everyone and not being annoying, but please do help to spread the information in your local community – Village Pump equivalents, IRC channels, social media groups and so on. *) Help translating the pages. We want the process to be as available as possible for everyone. It's not every available if it's only in English. *) If you want to get short updates through the notification system, you can sign up for the Community Tech Newsletter: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Newsletter:The_Community_Tech_Newsletter //Johan Jönsson --

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An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
by Mathieu Stumpf Guntz 04 Dec '17

04 Dec '17

Saluton ĉiuj, I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>, because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it, so please be bold. Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a bright future full of even more amazing things than what it already brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue. Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message: Thank you Lydia Pintscher <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29> for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0> miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been raised. Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this inquiry on the topic <https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_o…> advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work. Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>. To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version, please see the research project (work in progress, only chapter 1 is in good enough shape, and it's only available in French so far). Some proofs that this claim is completely wrong are welcome, as it would be great that in fact that was the community that was the driving force behind this single license choice and that it is the best choice for its future, not the future of giant tech companies. This would be a great contribution to bring such a happy light on this subject, so we can all let this issue alone and go back contributing in more interesting topics. Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia. Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge. So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal. This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible. Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic direction: Service and //*Equity*/ <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/…>. Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible. That is, starting where it confirms each others freedom. Because under this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery of others. CC-0 is one step towards that. That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have to agree without some convincing proof. Data is different from many other things we produce in Wikimedia in that it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on much more extensively. No it's not. From a data processing point of view, everything is data. Whether it's stored in a wikisyntax, in a relational database or engraved in stone only have a commodity side effect. Whether it's a random stream of bit generated by a dumb chipset or some encoded prose of Shakespeare make no difference. So from this point of view, no, what Wikidata store is not different from what is produced anywhere else in Wikimedia projects. Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many things. But this is not because it's data, when elsewhere there would be no data. It's because it enforce data to be stored in a way that ease aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and so on. Our data lives from being able to write queries over millions of statements, putting it into a mobile app, visualizing parts of it on a map and much more. Sure. It also lives from being curated from millions[2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…> of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a useless pile of random bytes. This means, if we require attribution, in a huge number of cases attribution would need to go back to potentially millions of editors and sources (even if that data is not visible in the end result but only helped to get the result). No, it doesn't mean that. First let's recall a few basics as it seems the whole answer makes confusion between attribution and distribution of contributions under the same license as the original. Attribution is crucial for traceability and so for reliable and trusted knowledge that we are targeting within the Wikimedia movement. The "same license" is the sole legal guaranty of equity contributors have. That's it, trusted knowledge and equity are requirements for the Wikimedia movement goals. That means withdrawing this requirements is withdrawing this goals. Now, what would be the additional cost of storing sources in Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's already here as the "reference" attribute is part of the Wikibase item structure. So attribution is not a problem, you don't have to put it in front of your derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article: until you go to history, you have zero attribution visible, and it's ok. It's also have probably zero or negligible computing cost, as it doesn't have to be included in all computations, it just need to be retrievable on demand. What would be the additional cost of storing licenses for each item based on its source? Well, adding a license attribute might help, but actually if your reference is a work item, I guess it might comes with a "license" statement, so zero additional cost. Now for letting user specify under which free licenses they publish their work, that would just require an additional attribute, a ridiculous weight when balanced with equity concerns it resolves. Could that prevent some uses for some actors? Yes, that's actually the point, preventing abuse of those who doesn't want to act equitably. For all other actors a "distribute under same condition" is fine. This is potentially computationally hard to do and and depending on where the data is used very inconvenient (think of a map with hundreds of data points in a mobile app). OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive license, do exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way, allowing a license by item would enable to include OpenStreetMap data in WikiData, which is currently impossible due to the CC0 single license policy of the project. Too bad, it could be so useful to have this data accessible for Wikimedia projects, but who cares? This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to impose on them. Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that Wikidata would care first of re-users which are in the phase with Wikimedia goal, so surely needs of Wikimedia community in particular and Free/Libre Culture in general should be considered. Do this re-users would be penalized by a copyleft license? Surely no, or they wouldn't use it extensively as they do. So who are this re-users for who it's thought preferable, without consulting the community, to not annoy with questions of equity and traceability? It would make it significantly harder to re-use our data and be in direct conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge. No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a button on a computer to do that rather than this. What is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goals emerging from the 2017 community consultation is going against equity and traceability. You propose to discard both to satisfy exogenous demands which should have next to no weight in decision impacting so deeply the future of our community. Whether data can be protected in this way at all or not depends on the jurisdiction we are talking about. See this Wikilegal on on database rights <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights> for more details. It says basically that it's applicable in United States and Europe on different legal bases and extents. And for the rest of the world, it doesn't say it doesn't say nothing can apply, it states nothing. So even if we would have decided to require attribution it would only be enforceable in some jurisdictions. What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be applicable in some country, so let's withdraw the few rights we have. Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also unfortunately often means that people refrain from what they want to to for fear of legal repercussions. This is directly in conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge. Economic inequality, social inequity and legal imbalance might also refrain people from doing what they want, as they fear practical repercussions. CC0 strengthen this discrimination factors by enforcing people to withdraw the few rights they have to weight against the growing asymmetry that social structures are concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique license choice is in direct conflict with our goal of *equitably* spreading knowledge. Also it seems like this statement suggest that releasing our contributions only under CC0 is the sole solution to diminish legal doubts. Actually any well written license would do an equal job regarding this point, including many copyleft licenses out there. So while associate a clear license to each data item might indeed diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an argument at all for enforcing CC0 as sole license available to contributors. Moreover, just putting a license side by side with a work does not ensure that the person who made the association was legally allowed to do so. To have a better confidence in the legitimacy of a statement that a work is covered by a certain license, there is once again a traceability requirement. For example, Wikidata currently include many items which were imported from misc. Wikipedia versions, and claim that the derived work obtained – a set of items and statements – is under CC0. That is a hugely doubtful statement and it alarmingly looks like license laundering <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>. This is true for Wikipedia, but it's also true for any source on which a large scale extraction and import are operated, whether through bots or crowd sourcing. So the Wikidata project is currently extremely misplaced to give lessons on legal ambiguity, as it heavily plays with legal blur and the hope that its shady practises won't fall under too much scrutiny. Licenses that require attribution are often used as a way to try to make it harder for big companies to profit from openly available resources. No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to make it harder for big companies to profit from openly available resources/ *in inequitable manners*. That's completely different. Copyleft licenses give the same rights to big companies and individuals in a manner that lower socio-economic inequalities which disproportionally advantage the former. The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working. Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend, so of course it's not working for this goal. But for the goal that copyleft licenses aims at, there are clear evidences that yes it works. Big companies have the legal and engineering resources to handle both the legal minefield and the technical hurdles easily. There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war material analogy is disrespectful. That's true that copyleft licenses might come with some constraints that non-copyleft free licenses don't have, but that the price for fostering equity. And it's a low price, that even individuals can manage, it might require a very little extra time on legal considerations, but on the other hand using the free work is an immensely vast gain that worth it. In Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is stated /proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free software developers need to make advantages for each other/. This might be generalised as /big companies have the advantage of money; free/libre culture contributors need to make advantages for each other/. So at odd with what pretend this fallacious claims against copyleft licenses, they are not a "minefield and the technical hurdles" that only big companies can handle. All the more, let's recall who financed the initial development of Wikidata: only actors which are related to big companies. Who it is really hurting is the smaller start-up, institution or hacker who can not deal with it. If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then this is just plainly false. Smaller actors have more to gain in preserving mutual benefit of the common ecosystem that a copyleft license fosters. With Wikidata we are making structured data about the world available for everyone. And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license to be achieved. We are leveling the playing field to give those who currently don’t have access to the knowledge graphs of the big companies a chance to build something amazing. And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license. Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable project on this point, as it allows unfair actors to take it all, add some interesting added value that our community can not afford, reach/reinforce an hegemonic position in the ecosystem with their own closed solution. And, ta ta, Wikidata can be discontinued quietly, just like Google did with the defunct Freebase which was CC-BY-SA before they bought the company that was running it, and after they imported it under CC0 in Wikidata as a new attempt to gather a larger community of free curators. And when it will have performed license laundering of all Wikimedia projects works with shady mass extract and import, Wikimedia can disappear as well. Of course big companies benefits more of this possibilities than actors with smaller financial support and no hegemonic position. Thereby we are helping more people get access to knowledge from more places than just the few big ones. No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies to reinforce their position in which they can distribute information manipulated as they wish, without consideration for traceability and equity considerations. Allowing contributors to also use copyleft licenses would be far more effective to /collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge/ that /focus efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege/, as stated in /Our strategic direction: Service and Equity/. CC-0 is becoming more and more common. Just like economic inequality <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>. But that is not what we are aiming to foster in the Wikimedia movement. Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and are happy with the experience. Among them are the European Union, Europeana, the National Library of Sweden and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Arts. Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia community, they have their own goals and plan to be sustainable that does not necessarily meet what our community can follow. Different contexts require different means. States and their institutions can count on tax revenue, and if taxpayers ends up in public domain works, that's great and seems fair. States are rarely threatened by companies, they have legal lever to pressure that kind of entity, although conflict of interest and lobbying can of course mitigate this statement. Importing that kind of data with proper attribution and license is fine, be it CC0 or any other free license. But that's not an argument in favour of enforcing on benevolent a systematic withdraw of all their rights as single option to contribute. All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our data to give attribution to Wikidata because we believe it is in the interest of all parties involved. That's it, zero legal hope of equity. And our experience shows that many of our re-users do give credit to Wikidata even if they are not forced to. Experience also show that some prominent actors like Google won't credit the Wikimedia community anymore when generating directly answer based on, inter alia, information coming from Wikidata, which is itself performing license laundering of Wikipedia data. Are there no downsides to this? No, of course not. Some people chose not to participate, some data can't be imported and some re-users do not attribute us. But the benefits I have seen over the years for Wikidata and the larger open knowledge ecosystem far outweigh them. This should at least backed with some solid statistics that it had a positive impact in term of audience and contribution in Wikimedia project as a whole. Maybe the introduction of Wikidata did have a positive effect on the evolution of total number of contributors, or maybe so far it has no significant correlative effect, or maybe it is correlative with a decrease of the total number of active contributors. Some plots would be interesting here. Mere personal feelings of benefits and hindrances means nothing here, mine included of course. Plus, there is not even the beginning of an attempt to A/B test with a second Wikibase instant that allow users to select which licenses its contributions are released under, so there is no possible way to state anything backed on relevant comparison. The fact that they are some people satisfied with the current state of things doesn't mean they would not be even more satisfied with a more equitable solution that allows contributors to chose a free license set for their publications. All the more this is all about the sustainability and fostering of our community and reaching its goals, not immediate feeling of satisfaction for some people. * [1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op…> * [2] according to the next statement of Lydia Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against Wikidata. The motivation behind this message is a hope that one day one might participate in Wikidata with the same respect for equity and traceability that is granted in other Wikimedia projects. Kun multe da vikiamo, mathieu

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
by mathieu stumpf guntz 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Saluton Nicolas, Le 30/11/2017 à 00:23, Nicolas VIGNERON a écrit : > Mathieu, > > I know you and like you personally, that why I can say that this mail > is clearly not your best argument. > > Despite saying multiple times this is not a manifesto nor against > Wikidata, your mail seems clearly fuelled with biases and > misjudgements (especially Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » > not now that it's so widely used in Wikimedia projects, even the > wiktionaries are *already* using Wikidata). That's perfectly plausible that my view is fuelled with biases and misjudgements, and that's why I'm looking for feedback that might help in correcting them if needed. I prefer to expose my errors blatantly and seize opportunities to correct them rather than confine myself in my possibly misguided views. Of course, the statement that Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » is shocking. Surely I'm a little provocative here. But one have to put that in perspective with the fact that my previous attempts to get feedback on this were far less provocative, or at least were aiming at being as unprovocative as I could do. So I recognize you are right to point this, all the more as I made my previous more cordial demands in less visible canals. > Dissecting each single phrase point by point is violent, borderline > mean and definitely not constructive ; cross-posting this mail on > multiple places doesn't help either. This is not the good way to > debate peacefully. First, if people felt personally assaulted by my message, I apologize. I wasn't aware that treating a topic point by point extensively could be perceived as such a violent behaviour. I don't want to harass anyone, I want to get constructive feedback on this topic from as many people of our community that I can get. If there are better way to achieve this through documented peaceful process, I would welcome references to this kind of documentation. And if we don't have that kind of documentation, I think it would be interesting that we build one. > > For better or worse, Wikidata choose CC0 and it will be quite > difficult to change the licence now (the example of licence change on > OpenStreetMap illustrate it quite painfully). Actually, with CC0 – if it appeared that all the data contained in Wikidata really can be published under CC0 – we could switch the whole database to whatever license we want. That was even explicitly stated as is at the start of the project that: So do I understand it correctly that during development and testing, we can can go with CC-0, and later relicense to whatever seems suitable, which is possible with CC-0?, Denny Vrandečić, https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata//2012-April/000185.html But as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't suggest for such a unilateral move. For me, just allowing a tracking of license for each item would be enough. > We have to get approval of the community, there was multiple lengthy > and non-conclusive discussions, it's not something that will be done > with a ranting mail. I'm interested with links to this community discussions and clear approval of the community. > > For me, the situation is quite simple, Wikidata needs lexiographical > data and the Wikimedia projects needs Wikidata to have these data. I agree with that, or at least that it would be very positive for our community to have this kind of tools. > Nobody suggest in no way to do license laundering nor to violates > Wiktionaries licence, It's not suggestion, it's what Wikidata is already doing with Wikipedia, despite the initial statement of Wikidata team[1] that it wouldn't do that because it's illegal : /"Alexrk2, it is true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be allowed to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does not plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will provide data that can be reused in the Wikipedias./" – Denny Vrandečić https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata#Is_CC_the_right_license_for_d… I think that the extent to which massive import without respecting license of the source should be investigated properly by the Wikimedia legal team, or some qualified consultants. In the mid time, based on its previous practises, it's clear that promises of Wikidata team regarding respect of licenses can not be trusted. So even if they suggested that that kind of massive import won't be done, it wouldn't be enough. > in fact we could simply import Public Domain sources (in the same way > the wiktionaries did, in frwikt a big chunk of entries come from the > /Littré/ and the /Dictionnaire de l’Académie française/, and there is > enough dictionaries waiting in the Wikisources to keep us busy for > years) but it would be a shame for Wikidata to not profits from > wiktionarists expertise. I agree with that. All the more, all this material we imported helped much in populating the project, but it often includes heavy biases, outdated definitions which are not marked as is, completely sexists and racists definitions that we are improving with the goals and values of our movement in mind. So it's not just expertise of contributors, but also all the work they already achieved that should be mergeable in the Wikidata solution. Only allowing CC0 will make that impossible. > Let's get over the petty and unsolvable issues and work intelligently > and pragmatically to improve Wikidata. > > You entitled to disagree with the way that has been chosen and not > take part in it (and from your editcount, I see that you don't) but > please don't destroy others efforts and try to be more aligned with > the wiki-spirit. I'm not trying to destroy the work of any part of our community, but on the contrary I'm aiming at protect its sustainability. If my concerns are only mere delusions, that's great. But if it's not, I would feel ashamed in the future that I suspected possible avoidable bad scenario and did nothing about that. All the more, Wikidata aims at being ubiquitous under all Wikimedia projects, even if some integration are moderated through community consensus. So there is no way I might avoid it completely while continuing to contribute in Wikimedia projects. Actually I have recently learn that there are already data which are automatically inserted in Wikidata when publishing contributions on others mediawiki projects, but so far I'm not aware of what is cover exactly. All the more, I am in fact very favourable to a more ubiquitous integration of Wikidata in our ecosystem. But not with the current license conditions. I hope my answer wasn't too point by point so that it wont fall in the problems you mentioned. Amike, mathieu > > A galon, ~nicolas > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata mailing list > Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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Appointment of Gabriele Theren and Peter Dewald to the WMDE Board of Trustees
by Tim Moritz Hector 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Dear all, I am delighted to announce that Wikimedia Deutschland’s Board has taken the opportunity to appoint two new members for the first time. Dr. Gabriele Theren and Peter Dewald are taking appointed seats in our board. After our general assembly decided to make way for up to 3 appointed seats, we created a profile of skills we would like to add to the board. We focussed on the future of Wikimedia Deutschland, strategically and financially, and got about 60 applications. Many of them showed impressive profiles, striving for Free Knowledge. We decided for Gabriele, who is a trained lawyer, mediator and serves as department head in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. We also elected Peter who has 35 years of expertise as managing director at Apple and the software group Sage, was member of the board of Germany’s digital association Bitkom and has a lot of experience in volunteer work. Both will be members of the board until the next election by the general assembly in about one year. Please join me in welcoming Gabriele and Peter to the Wikiverse. Best regards, Tim Moritz Hector -- Tim Moritz Hector Chair of the Board Wikimedia Deutschland

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
by mathieu stumpf guntz 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Le 30/11/2017 à 10:13, Egon Willighagen a écrit : > Dear Mathieu, > > On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:45 PM, Mathieu Stumpf Guntz > <psychoslave(a)culture-libre.org <mailto:psychoslave@culture-libre.org>> > wrote: > > I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta > Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>, > because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community > on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely > misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm > extremely interested to know it, so please be bold. > > As having contributed to many open database and as user of many open > database, the CCZero is my default choice for making data open. > Adoption of this license is, IMHO, the prime reason Wikidata is > growing so fast, and integrated so fast in many use cases. Well, that would indeed be a huge point in favor of CC0 then. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to turn that into a measurable analyze, as too many factors might come coincidentally to this. However, since you are contributor of many open database, maybe you are aware of some studies on the subject which can back your opinion. > License incompatibilities have been a major concern in open source > development and academic research. Yes, there too, there is a > continuous almost-religious and unsolved discussion about copylefting, > but the plain experience there is that the closer to the idea of > public domain, the easier it is to use. The advantages of CCZero have > been widely discussed in the life sciences, and while not everyone > choice, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for many. Well, surely my message don't help to make it obvious, but I'm not radically against CC0, and don't deny it does have huge advantages in reuse. As an example I already gave the CC0/public domain for works publishd by State institutions. This is something that I am completely favorable to and will defend and promote anytime I can. > I also note that public domain (which CCZero formalizes across > jurisdictions) is still the "ideal" license when uploading images to > Wikimedia, suggesting more of Wikimedia actually finds the CCZero idea > very welcome. I'm not sure what you mean here. If you are talking about things like pictures that the NASA release, I think it falls in the case exposed above. If you are speaking of the most used license on Wikimedia by benevolent contributors, I'm not aware of the statistics on this topic, but would be interested to have some. > Also stress that in no way I recognize myself in your comments about > Denny and Google. I guess it's all in your honour. > And your comment that "freedom of one is murder and slavery of others" > needs some refinement, IMHO; my definition of "freedom" is quite > different and I experience your definition as abusive and offensive. If you mean "freedom of one begins where it confirms freedom of others", it's not "my" definition, however I could not give proper credit to it. Maybe Joseph Déjacque was among the first to publish this with some variation in the exact formulation. But really this not "mine definition". Also it is of course not the ultimate definition of freedom that everybody have to agree with. If you are talking about the more dramatic example of "freedom abuse" I provided next to this definition, as far as I'm aware it's more or less my forgery. Although it probably was somewhat influenced by a comment of Teofilo[1]. Suggestion of less dramatic examples which enlighten the point just as well are welcome. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata#Teofilo > > The CCZero license of Wikidata is essential to my contributions and > use of Wikimedia products. The chemistry knowledge in Wikidata is 100x > more useful (to me) than that in Wikipedia etc. That is in part > because of the machine readability, but also to a large part by the > choice of CCZero. > > I hope this helps, > > with kind regards, > > Egon > > -- > E.L. Willighagen > Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT > Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/) > Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/ > LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw > Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/ > PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers > ORCID: 0000-0001-7542-0286 > ImpactStory: https://impactstory.org/u/egonwillighagen > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata mailing list > Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
by James Hare 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

On November 29, 2017 at 3:33:47 PM, Scott MacLeod ( worlduniversityandschool(a)gmail.com) wrote: Dear Lydia, Mathieu, Nicolas and All, I'm seeking a clarification here to "An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0" re the implications of CC-0 licensing for Wikidata say in comparison with CC-4 licensing. If CC-0 licensing allows for commercial use - "Once the creator or a subsequent owner of a work applies CC0 to a work, the work is no longer his or hers in any meaningful sense under copyright law. Anyone can then use the work in any way and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, subject to other laws and the rights others may have in the work or how the work is used. Think of CC0 as the "no rights reserved" option " (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ ) ... ... and, by contrast, CC-4 licensing (say by MIT OpenCourseWare in its 7 languages, for example, - where its CC-4 licensing allows for "sharing" "adapting" but "non-commercially"), what would CC-0 Wikidata licensed databases allow for commercially? Since Wikidata, or Wikisource or Project Wikicite in particular, for example, are licensed CC-0 licensing option, could (CC) Bookstores, for example, use this CC-0 licensing, in all 295 of Wikipedia's languages, for the books in their (online) bookstores? (Also are there any data, or sister projects, affiliated with Wikidata that are not CC-0 re https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE% 29/CC-0 ? ) Thanks, Scott CC-0 is functionally equivalent to the public domain. Anything released under CC-0 can be used by anyone for any reason with no conditions whatsoever. For more information see < https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/>. Since Wikidata’s data is released under CC-0, it can be used by anyone for any reason with no conditions. Cheers, James Hare

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
by mathieu stumpf guntz 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Le 30/11/2017 à 08:57, Luca Martinelli a écrit : > I basically stopped reading this email after the first attack to Denny. That's sad to read, but I guess I must mostly blame my unfortunate formulations. > > I was there since the beginning, and I do recall the *extensive* > discussion about what license to use. CC0 was chosen, among other > things, because of the moronic EU rule about database rights, that CC > 3.0 licenses didn't allow us to counter - please remember that 4.0 > were still under discussion, and we couldn't afford the luxury of > waiting for 4.0 to come out before publishing Wikidata. I welcome any reference to this discussions. > > And possibly next time provide a TL;DR version of your email at the top. Ok, thank you for this suggestion, I'll do that. > > Cheers, > > L. > > > Il 29 nov 2017 22:46, "Mathieu Stumpf Guntz" > <psychoslave(a)culture-libre.org <mailto:psychoslave@culture-libre.org>> > ha scritto: > > Saluton ĉiuj, > > I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta > Tremendous Wiktionary User Group talk page > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>, > because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community > on this point. Whether you think that my view is completely > misguided or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm > extremely interested to know it, so please be bold. > > Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind > that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I > wish it a bright future full of even more amazing things than what > it already brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue. > > Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message: > > Thank you Lydia Pintscher > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29> > for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer > <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0> > miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have > been raised. > > Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the > decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as > this inquiry on the topic > <https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_o…> > advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata > choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – > to make it short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph > team. Also it worth noting that Google funded a quarter of the > initial development work. Another quarter came from the Gordon and > Betty Moore Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half > the money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Institute > for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1] > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>. > To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the > puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm > of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version, > please see the research project (work in progress, only chapter 1 > is in good enough shape, and it's only available in French so > far). Some proofs that this claim is completely wrong are welcome, > as it would be great that in fact that was the community that was > the driving force behind this single license choice and that it is > the best choice for its future, not the future of giant tech > companies. This would be a great contribution to bring such a > happy light on this subject, so we can all let this issue alone > and go back contributing in more interesting topics. > > Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia. > > Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge. > So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal. > This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible. > Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic > direction: Service and //*Equity*/ > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/…>. > Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible. > That is, starting where it confirms each others freedom. > Because under this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery > of others. > CC-0 is one step towards that. > That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have > to agree without some convincing proof. > Data is different from many other things we produce in Wikimedia > in that it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on > much more extensively. > No it's not. From a data processing point of view, everything > is data. Whether it's stored in a wikisyntax, in a relational > database or engraved in stone only have a commodity side > effect. Whether it's a random stream of bit generated by a > dumb chipset or some encoded prose of Shakespeare make no > difference. So from this point of view, no, what Wikidata > store is not different from what is produced anywhere else in > Wikimedia projects. > Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many things. > But this is not because it's data, when elsewhere there would > be no data. It's because it enforce data to be stored in a way > that ease aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and > so on. > > Our data lives from being able to write queries over millions of > statements, putting it into a mobile app, visualizing parts of it > on a map and much more. > Sure. It also lives from being curated from millions[2] > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…> > of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a useless pile > of random bytes. > This means, if we require attribution, in a huge number of cases > attribution would need to go back to potentially millions of > editors and sources (even if that data is not visible in the end > result but only helped to get the result). > No, it doesn't mean that. > First let's recall a few basics as it seems the whole answer > makes confusion between attribution and distribution of > contributions under the same license as the original. > Attribution is crucial for traceability and so for reliable > and trusted knowledge that we are targeting within the > Wikimedia movement. The "same license" is the sole legal > guaranty of equity contributors have. That's it, trusted > knowledge and equity are requirements for the Wikimedia > movement goals. That means withdrawing this requirements is > withdrawing this goals. > Now, what would be the additional cost of storing sources in > Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's already here as the > "reference" attribute is part of the Wikibase item structure. > So attribution is not a problem, you don't have to put it in > front of your derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article: > until you go to history, you have zero attribution visible, > and it's ok. It's also have probably zero or negligible > computing cost, as it doesn't have to be included in all > computations, it just need to be retrievable on demand. > What would be the additional cost of storing licenses for each > item based on its source? Well, adding a license attribute > might help, but actually if your reference is a work item, I > guess it might comes with a "license" statement, so zero > additional cost. Now for letting user specify under which free > licenses they publish their work, that would just require an > additional attribute, a ridiculous weight when balanced with > equity concerns it resolves. > Could that prevent some uses for some actors? Yes, that's > actually the point, preventing abuse of those who doesn't want > to act equitably. For all other actors a "distribute under > same condition" is fine. > This is potentially computationally hard to do and and depending > on where the data is used very inconvenient (think of a map with > hundreds of data points in a mobile app). > OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive license, > do exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way, allowing a > license by item would enable to include OpenStreetMap data in > WikiData, which is currently impossible due to the CC0 single > license policy of the project. Too bad, it could be so useful > to have this data accessible for Wikimedia projects, but who > cares? > This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to impose on > them. > Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that Wikidata > would care first of re-users which are in the phase with > Wikimedia goal, so surely needs of Wikimedia community in > particular and Free/Libre Culture in general should be > considered. Do this re-users would be penalized by a copyleft > license? Surely no, or they wouldn't use it extensively as > they do. So who are this re-users for who it's thought > preferable, without consulting the community, to not annoy > with questions of equity and traceability? > It would make it significantly harder to re-use our data and be in > direct conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge. > No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a button > on a computer to do that rather than this. What is in direct > conflict with our clearly stated goals emerging from the 2017 > community consultation is going against equity and > traceability. You propose to discard both to satisfy exogenous > demands which should have next to no weight in decision > impacting so deeply the future of our community. > Whether data can be protected in this way at all or not depends on > the jurisdiction we are talking about. See this Wikilegal on on > database rights > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights> for > more details. > It says basically that it's applicable in United States and > Europe on different legal bases and extents. And for the rest > of the world, it doesn't say it doesn't say nothing can apply, > it states nothing. > So even if we would have decided to require attribution it would > only be enforceable in some jurisdictions. > What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be applicable > in some country, so let's withdraw the few rights we have. > Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also unfortunately > often means that people refrain from what they want to to for fear > of legal repercussions. This is directly in conflict with our goal > of spreading knowledge. > Economic inequality, social inequity and legal imbalance might > also refrain people from doing what they want, as they fear > practical repercussions. CC0 strengthen this discrimination > factors by enforcing people to withdraw the few rights they > have to weight against the growing asymmetry that social > structures are concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique > license choice is in direct conflict with our goal of > *equitably* spreading knowledge. > Also it seems like this statement suggest that releasing our > contributions only under CC0 is the sole solution to diminish > legal doubts. Actually any well written license would do an > equal job regarding this point, including many copyleft > licenses out there. So while associate a clear license to each > data item might indeed diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an > argument at all for enforcing CC0 as sole license available to > contributors. > Moreover, just putting a license side by side with a work does > not ensure that the person who made the association was > legally allowed to do so. To have a better confidence in the > legitimacy of a statement that a work is covered by a certain > license, there is once again a traceability requirement. For > example, Wikidata currently include many items which were > imported from misc. Wikipedia versions, and claim that the > derived work obtained – a set of items and statements – is > under CC0. That is a hugely doubtful statement and it > alarmingly looks like license laundering > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>. This is > true for Wikipedia, but it's also true for any source on which > a large scale extraction and import are operated, whether > through bots or crowd sourcing. > So the Wikidata project is currently extremely misplaced to > give lessons on legal ambiguity, as it heavily plays with > legal blur and the hope that its shady practises won't fall > under too much scrutiny. > Licenses that require attribution are often used as a way to try > to make it harder for big companies to profit from openly > available resources. > No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to make it > harder for big companies to profit from openly available > resources/ *in inequitable manners*. That's completely > different. Copyleft licenses give the same rights to big > companies and individuals in a manner that lower > socio-economic inequalities which disproportionally advantage > the former. > The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working. > Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend, so of > course it's not working for this goal. But for the goal that > copyleft licenses aims at, there are clear evidences that yes > it works. > Big companies have the legal and engineering resources to handle > both the legal minefield and the technical hurdles easily. > There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war material > analogy is disrespectful. That's true that copyleft licenses > might come with some constraints that non-copyleft free > licenses don't have, but that the price for fostering equity. > And it's a low price, that even individuals can manage, it > might require a very little extra time on legal > considerations, but on the other hand using the free work is > an immensely vast gain that worth it. In Why you shouldn't use > the Lesser GPL for your next library > <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is stated > /proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; > free software developers need to make advantages for each > other/. This might be generalised as /big companies have the > advantage of money; free/libre culture contributors need to > make advantages for each other/. So at odd with what pretend > this fallacious claims against copyleft licenses, they are not > a "minefield and the technical hurdles" that only big > companies can handle. All the more, let's recall who financed > the initial development of Wikidata: only actors which are > related to big companies. > Who it is really hurting is the smaller start-up, institution or > hacker who can not deal with it. > If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then this is > just plainly false. Smaller actors have more to gain in > preserving mutual benefit of the common ecosystem that a > copyleft license fosters. > With Wikidata we are making structured data about the world > available for everyone. > And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license > to be achieved. > We are leveling the playing field to give those who currently > don’t have access to the knowledge graphs of the big companies a > chance to build something amazing. > And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole > license. Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable project on > this point, as it allows unfair actors to take it all, add > some interesting added value that our community can not > afford, reach/reinforce an hegemonic position in the ecosystem > with their own closed solution. And, ta ta, Wikidata can be > discontinued quietly, just like Google did with the defunct > Freebase which was CC-BY-SA before they bought the company > that was running it, and after they imported it under CC0 in > Wikidata as a new attempt to gather a larger community of free > curators. And when it will have performed license laundering > of all Wikimedia projects works with shady mass extract and > import, Wikimedia can disappear as well. Of course big > companies benefits more of this possibilities than actors with > smaller financial support and no hegemonic position. > Thereby we are helping more people get access to knowledge from > more places than just the few big ones. > No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies to > reinforce their position in which they can distribute > information manipulated as they wish, without consideration > for traceability and equity considerations. Allowing > contributors to also use copyleft licenses would be far more > effective to /collect and use different forms of free, trusted > knowledge/ that /focus efforts on the knowledge and > communities that have been left out by structures of power and > privilege/, as stated in /Our strategic direction: Service and > Equity/. > > CC-0 is becoming more and more common. > Just like economic inequality > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>. But that > is not what we are aiming to foster in the Wikimedia movement. > Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and are > happy with the experience. Among them are the European Union, > Europeana, the National Library of Sweden and the Metropolitan > Museum of Modern Arts. > Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia community, they > have their own goals and plan to be sustainable that does not > necessarily meet what our community can follow. Different > contexts require different means. States and their > institutions can count on tax revenue, and if taxpayers ends > up in public domain works, that's great and seems fair. States > are rarely threatened by companies, they have legal lever to > pressure that kind of entity, although conflict of interest > and lobbying can of course mitigate this statement. > Importing that kind of data with proper attribution and > license is fine, be it CC0 or any other free license. But > that's not an argument in favour of enforcing on benevolent a > systematic withdraw of all their rights as single option to > contribute. > All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our data to > give attribution to Wikidata because we believe it is in the > interest of all parties involved. > That's it, zero legal hope of equity. > And our experience shows that many of our re-users do give credit > to Wikidata even if they are not forced to. > Experience also show that some prominent actors like Google > won't credit the Wikimedia community anymore when generating > directly answer based on, inter alia, information coming from > Wikidata, which is itself performing license laundering of > Wikipedia data. > Are there no downsides to this? No, of course not. Some people > chose not to participate, some data can't be imported and some > re-users do not attribute us. But the benefits I have seen over > the years for Wikidata and the larger open knowledge ecosystem far > outweigh them. > This should at least backed with some solid statistics that it > had a positive impact in term of audience and contribution in > Wikimedia project as a whole. Maybe the introduction of > Wikidata did have a positive effect on the evolution of total > number of contributors, or maybe so far it has no significant > correlative effect, or maybe it is correlative with a decrease > of the total number of active contributors. Some plots would > be interesting here. Mere personal feelings of benefits and > hindrances means nothing here, mine included of course. > Plus, there is not even the beginning of an attempt to A/B > test with a second Wikibase instant that allow users to select > which licenses its contributions are released under, so there > is no possible way to state anything backed on relevant > comparison. The fact that they are some people satisfied with > the current state of things doesn't mean they would not be > even more satisfied with a more equitable solution that allows > contributors to chose a free license set for their > publications. All the more this is all about the > sustainability and fostering of our community and reaching its > goals, not immediate feeling of satisfaction for some people. > > * > > [1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op…> > > > * > > [2] according to the next statement of Lydia > > Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against Wikidata. The > motivation behind this message is a hope that one day one might > participate in Wikidata with the same respect for equity and > traceability that is granted in other Wikimedia projects. > > Kun multe da vikiamo, > mathieu > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata mailing list > Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata > <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata mailing list > Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia mocks expert contributor
by Renée Bagslint 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Robert Fernandez thinks it is "remarkably inappopriate" to put the phrase "*experts **are scum"* in quotation marks as if it were a quotation from the Signpost. No. This is a quotation, which perhaps he did not recognise, from a rather long-standing and well-known essay, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Anti-elitism which discusses this very issue and is a convenient and common way of summarising the attitude exhibited in the article. Does Robert have any views on the topic of this thread?

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Wikimedia-l November 2017