On Nov 22, 2007 7:09 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 22/11/2007, Fred Bauder
<fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
Actually, no. They could retain those articles
under GFDL. But have all
others which did not contain text from Wikipedia under some other license.
Consider copyright from the perspective of each article.
Yes, that certainly seems to be their intention. It's going to really
complicate matters though. GFDL being viral means that any article
containing a single sentence from a GFDL article (give or take fair
use, I guess) must be entirely under GFDL, so if they start moving
articles around and merging them, they're going to end up with a large
portion of the site under GFDL.
If they go with a non-GFDL license for non-Wikipedia content, they
should probably eliminate the Wikipedia-based articles completely.
It's relatively minor to rewrite the article in your own words if
you're going to go through and fact-check everything anyway. Using a
two-step process where one person extracts the facts (after checking
the sources) and then a second person writes the article from those
facts would probably be even easier. In that sense going with a
non-GFDL license could actually be an advantage, as it'd encourage
people to do more than just copy/paste. (*)
Of course, I think that non-GFDL license should actually be a free
[TM] one :). I'm one of those ones who has significantly cut down on
contributions to Citizendium after hearing rumblings about the license
possibly not being a free [TM] one.
(*) I guess it could be said that this process could in itself violate
copyright on the collection of facts, but realistically if you're
porting to another free [TM] license and you acknowledge Wikipedia as
a source I don't think anyone would even try to sue, let alone win a
lawsuit.
(**) I use [TM] next to free because another one of Larry's
"eccentricities" is that he insists that an NC license is a free
license. I think it's obvious what I mean by free, but in case you're
not sure, see
http://freedomdefined.org/, that's essentially my use of
the term.