2007/9/11, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com:
All this is just al illustration of my opinion that the GFDL is a highly impractical license, and that we would do well to accept other licenses instead of or alongside GFDL.
As just to show how impractical - there are 14 requirements for modified versions, of those 14: * A is broken by Wikipedia (no different title is given) * B is broken (author of the new version and authors of the previous version are not given on what should reasonably be considered the title page) * C is broken (wikipedia is mentioned on the 'title page', but not being a formal entity can't be the publisher, that is, I guess, the WMF) * D is trivially adhered to (there are no copyright notices on Wikipedia pages, so they are indeed kept) * E is broken (the copyright notice as required by the GFDL is not shown) * F is broken only in a trivial way (the permission is shown, but not after the copyright notices, since they aren't shown) * G is trivially kept (there are no invariant sections and cover texts, so they are kept as far as they exist) * H is possibly adhered to (the issue is whether having a link is sufficient to consider the GFDL is 'included') * I is broken (our history does not include the title or the publisher of the modified version) * J is kept (the history gives links to a network location of a transparent copy) * K is trivially kept (there are no acknowledgements or dedications, so keeping them is trivial) * L is trivially kept (there are no invariant sections) * M is trivially kept (there is no section 'endorsements') * N is (usually) kept * O is trivially kept (there are no warranty disclaimers)
Of 15 requirements, I count 3 adhered to, 5 broken and 8 trivially adhered to. If we're so bad at keeping to the GFDL ourselves, we surely are putting undue pressure on others by forcing them to adhere to it.