Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Anthony wrote:
snip
This paragraph is somewhat contradictory, but it does explicitly say that trademark law does not prevent giving Wikimedia credit for the work by name.
Anthony _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
If my understanding of the FDL is correct, then the publisher must at least provide a pointer back to the original authors and perhaps must list all of the authors in the published materials somewhere.
What would the Wikimedia Foundation's reaction be if the material were published without giving any credit to the Foundation or the original authors?
regards, lazyquasar
That becomes an issue of copyright law. At least according to U.S. copyright law, you need to list all of the authors who have a copyright claim over the content. It is for this reason why I added the "authors" pages to the Wikijunior books, and this is now common practice for most Wikibooks that are at a substantial level of completion. If you want to have your name included in the credits (which can be verified through page edits) of the Wikibook, you are asked to add your name to the list of authors. Academic ethics alone would have you include these names, although the order of the names can be debated.
As far as using the name of the book (aka Wikijunior Big Cats) that is another story, and it is also a matter of how far does the WMF want to go with protecting their trademarks and how can ordinary users trying to act in good faith be able to make publications that also acknowlege that this content was created using WMF servers. Certainly offering a credit on the "authors page" is not a violation of trademark law, and a minor issue is over if the WMF has any sort of copyright claim on content produced and edited on WMF servers. On that point, I don't know. It gets into fine points of copyright law where I know similar situations where copyright can be asserted by 3rd parties under some circumstances.
For instance, Microsoft can assert copyright over all software that is generated by using their compilers, even if they didn't "author" that actual computer software. In this case it doesn't change the GFDL, but the question does arise if there can be any sort of copyright claim by the WMF on content produced by Wikimedia projects. The typical response on this mailing list is "No", but I wouldn't be so quick to jump to that conclusion unless it was in the form of an official statement by the WMF that they don't claim any copyright on any project materials. In other words, even if there could be a copyright claim, the WMF is renoucing any potential copyright claims. It is a two-edged sword in the sense that copyright claim also implies liability for content, although the WMF seems to be acting as though they are liable for Wikimedia project content as well.