On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
It seems to me that CC has a history of addressing stakeholder needs. If we were to adopt one of their licenses, we would instantly become one of the most significant, if not the most significant, stakeholders -- and I do believe our concerns would be taken very seriously, as I think they already are.
Yep. CC 3.01 was rephrased from CC 3.0 entirely due to our concerns re: Commons. Several CC people (including Joi Ito) are active on commons-l.
I really hope that your response to this decision will not be antagonism but engagement and feedback. There's basically, as far as I can see, two likely outcomes:
- The Wikimedia community will support an immediate switch to
CC-BY-SA, and the critics of the license will dig themselves into a position of extreme antagonism, asking their contributions to be removed, etc.
- The Wikimedia community will work together in trying to help
Creative Commons to improve CC-BY-SA, and then make the switch. I would prefer the second scenario over the first; I do think you have legitimate concerns that we should try to work on. Please help us to make that possible.
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
- d.