On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:48 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If this is true, we could probably use the "protest if you object" process proposed by Mike a while ago for these projects. It would be painful if there's a substantial number of users who object to a license change, but may become necessary.
While Mike's the lawyer, not me, it still seems very strange that you can violate someone's copyright just by asking nicely and them not responding within a given time frame. Even if that is the case in the US, it would seem sensible to check with someone with a more international expertise that it works elsewhere.
Well, Mike has also admitted that "it can be argued pretty strongly that Wikipedia is not currently complying with GFDL fully", in which case it's irrelevant, because the GFDL is automatically revoked upon such non-compliance anyway.
In the end, all that really matters is that the people who own the copyright to Wikipedia aren't interested in going through the hassle and expense of suing the WMF. And if any of them actually were, the WMF would probably be willing to remove their contributions way before it got to that point anyway.