Andrew Whitworth wrote:
My point with the question was that the specific case of CC-BY-SA is a very nice analog for the GFDL in many respects. The Share-alike (SA) requirement of the license ensures that it is perpetually viral like the GFDL is, and the By-attribution (BY) aspect ensures that authors receive proper credit for their work. From a philosophical standpoint, this is almost identical to the GFDL. The benefit to using CC-BY-SA over the GFDL is that CC-BY-SA documents do not need to be accompanied by the whole text of the license, which is a gigantic benefit for short documents and images. This is why wikinews chose to switch to the CC-BY-SA, why commons prefers that license for it's images, and why many wikibookians are interested in per-book cross-licensing arrangements with this license.
--Andrew Whitworth
I will note here that when the license issue for Wikinews came up, I voted for using the GFDL on Wikinews. I do understand many of the arguments against the GFDL on Wikinews, and many of them are very valid. I just liked the GFDL better, and felt that a common license among all Wikimedia projects was a better option. BTW, the issue of moving Wikinews content to Wikipedia has come up on Wikipedia, with some people pointing out (correctly IMHO) that the CC license used by Wikinews is completely incompatible with the GFDL on Wikipedia. There are some real problems in that regard having Wikinews under a completely different licensing regime but that was also dealt with when the license decision was made. I hope this isn't the primary motivation behind the harmonization effort on the GFDL right now.
I'll also note that every image I've ever added to Commons (minus a few exceptions for good reasons) has been under the terms of the GFDL as well.... even though other licenses exist and I've known about them. I hope that this "preference for CC images" is something that is expressed on Commons as something that many individuals are doing, and not something perceived as a mandatory requirement. I'm not here as a die-hard advocate of the GFDL, but as an individual I would encourage others to contribute media and other content under the GFDL as well.
I also don't think the whole text inclusion issue is something that is necessarily a major problem with the GFDL.... even if that is something I hope that will be fixed with the next version update of the GFDL. This is a very legitimate criticism of the GFDL, but not a fatal flaw as has sometimes been said.
-- Robert Horning