Thanks all :-)
I am foreseeing, with a pinch of anxiety, how blurry
we should make our bylaws to include all povs... Erik
sentence appears fine to me, but I am troubled by all
the interpretations offered.
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote:
Erik Moeller (Eloquence) wrote in part
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
>??? wrote:
>>There is even the
>>question if we really want to force Wikinews
users to copyleft their
>>content, or if the public domain or an
attribution license wouldn't be
>>more practical in this instance.
>Then that project would not be free content.
By the definition of the Free Software Foundation,
that is correct.
However, that definition is not the only one. In
fact, most people have an
entirely different understanding of "free
content."
Actually, mav is not correct even by the FSF's
definitions.
The FSF doesn't even use the term "content" in the
first place
(see
but they do use the phrase "free
documentation".
They don't define that phrase specifically, but say
"The criterion
for a free manual is pretty much the same as for
free software [code]."
(see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html>),
and for code they say "The simplest way to make a
program free
is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted."
(see <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html>).
So the public domain is free, even according to the
FSF.
What mav ''intends'' to say, I believe, is that
Wikinews should be COPYLEFT.
There are certainly arguments to be made for that
position.
But public domain and CC-by documents ARE FREE
documents.
As such, even the FSF would be willing to use them
in GNU documentation.
PD and CC-by just are not copyleft. (CC-by-sa is
copyleft,
while CC-by-nd, CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa and
CC-by-nc-nd
are not even free, at least not by the FSF's
standards.)
What is the difference between free and copyleft?
Fundamentally, a document is free if ''it'' may be
used freely:
freely read, freely copied, freely modified, and
freely distributed
(see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
or
<http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines>).
A document is copyleft if ''its derivatives'' may be
used freely.
For example, the Brothers Grimm published a story
"Schneewittchen",
and their work ended up (through the passage of
time) in the public domain.
As such, it was free: freely usable, copyable,
modifiable, and distributatble.
In 1938, Walt Disney took advantage of the latter
two freedoms
to create a derivative work "Snow White", which is
still copyright today.
The Disney movie is not free, even though it's based
on the free Grimm story.
This was possible because the Grimm story, while
free, was not copyleft.
Now, anybody with a soul hates the Walt Disney
Company (I joke somewhat),
so this gives an indication of the argument in
favour of copyleft.
But there's also the argument that this doesn't
apply to Wikinews.
(There are also arguments against copyleft in
general,
the Disney problem notwithstanding.)
We can have this argument, but let's be clear about
what we're arguing over.
AFAIK, ''nobody'' is advocating that Wikimedia
publish non-free articles.
(There is the issue of incorporating fair use items
''within'' articles,
such as quotations and images, but that is a
different discussion.)
The question is whether their freedom must be
protected by copyleft.
>Public domain and non-share-alike attribution
licenses encourage mutually
>incompatible content forks where improvements
that
create derivative
>works cannot be re-incorporated back into the
original - meaning there
>is no positive feeback loop.
Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs.
public domain / attribution-
only licenses is "What is more important to
me -
enlarging the body of
content available under a free license, or making
sure that as many people
as possbile will be exposed to the content in
question?" The possibility
that we may want to answer this question
differently for some Wikimedia
projects than for others should not be discounted
out of hand.
Does anybody disagree with Erik's final sentence
here?
This discussion was sparked (at least in today's
incarnation)
by a Foundation rule referring to licences "like"
the GNU FDL.
We should continue to discuss and refine our ideas
about
what copyleft protection Wikimedia should use for
our free documents;
but as far as ''that'' rule is concerned, I believe
that all we need to do
is to clarify that by "like" the GNU FDL, we mean
�free�.
-- Toby
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