2009/1/10 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
The WMF is not just making and distributing verbatim copies of my works. Not effectively, not even remotely close to it. The only time they're even arguably distributing verbatim copies of my works would be for articles where I am the last author or for historical revisions.
Yes I thought you'd try that argument. The problem with it that every modified version is first distributed by someone other than the foundation. That the foundation then produces a verbatim copy of that rather than a modified version.
I haven't actually claimed to prefer the GFDL over CC-BY-SA 3.0. I've implied that I prefer the GFDL over the GFDL *and* CC-BY-SA 3.0.
That doesn't even make sense
Frankly, I don't understand CC-BY-SA 3.0.
You've never demonstrated an ability to understand any free license or copyright law in general so that doesn't greatly concern me.
It isn't clear what it means. There seems to be a belief that it can be interpreted to only require attribution of 5 authors, and I don't like that at all.
The word "five" doesn't appear in the license and "5" only appears in a section name and one reference to the section.
There might be a way to use one of the clauses to do this but it would be darn hard and the foundation has made statements that it won't use the relevant clause.
Further, there seems to be a belief that it can be interpreted to only require "a link" to such attribution, and that's even worse.
That is actually a step up from what the GFDL requires (and remember the GFDL has no problems in principle with stuff being provided by link see the whole transparent copy stuff)
And then, topping it off, there are some who feel it can be interpreted to only require the printing of a URL as "attribution". And Creative Commons is working closely with these people. So even if CC-BY-SA 3.0 doesn't mean that, there's a good chance CC-BY-SA 4.0 will.
I doubt it. Since CC pay some attention to the moral rights issue they are unlikely to make any solid statements about what counts as acceptable attribution.
I don't know if these interpretations are correct or not. But I'd rather not chance it. Especially since if they're not correct, there's not much point in switching to CC-BY-SA in the first place.
There are very considerable benefits. For example you can use a CC image on a postcard. GFDL not so much.
You want compatibility, why not add a clause to CC-BY-SA 3.0 letting people relicense that content under the GFDL? That'll achieve compatibility just as well. Obviously you think there are some "onerous requirements" in the GFDL that make that unacceptable. Of course, if that's the case, and these requirements really are so onerous, why doesn't the FSF remove them from the GFDL? Maybe the FSF doesn't actually find them to be onerous after all?
Because switching because allowing the shift to CC-BY-SA-3.0 is their way of removing them. About the only remotely significant stuff still under the GFDL once the switch is over will be software manuals for which the GFDL is merely a tolerably bad license.