Hoi, Wikipedia allows for the inclusion of text of material licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version. This means that there is no restriction to GFDL Version 1.2. Anyone who says anything different has always erroniously contributed to Wikipedia. From some people I can believe it to be an error however, I do not believe for a moment that Gregory Maxwell among others has not been always been aware of this. When the GFDL is amended by the FSF in such a way that it becomes possible to re-license to the CC-by-sa, it is very much what the FSF intends for the GFDL. Given that officials of the FSF have been clear in the past that the GFDL was never intended for content like Wikipedia I do not appreciate / understand the crocodile tears that are being shed.
As the GFDL is more restrictive then the CC-by, it is possible to include CC-by material in an GFDL work and have the whole be available under the GFDL. In the mean time the CC-by material is still available under the original license from where it became originally available. This can be Commons. It is *not *a copyright violation as it is at best can be considered a licensing violation. Given that the GFDL is more restrictive, it can be easily argued that the reason why material was provided is still very much applicable.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 2, 2007 11:13 AM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 12:59 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image.
Anything
less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs
do
so
for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of
making
derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only
derivative
images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak
and of
little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
Is not the liberal use of Wikicommons to host images (which can be embedded in dozen of text pages afterwards) a bit inconsistant with this concern anyway ?
Yes, it is inconsistent, but that reflects a problem with Commons. There is nothing wrong with creating a free image repository, but using that repository to mix copyleft licensing is potentially problematic since these versions of "free" are arguably incompatible.
Wikipedia doesn't allow the inclusion of CC-SA text, but does allow CC-SA images under a theory that images and text can be understood as "seperate and independent" elements of a collection rather than part of single, unified article. Frankly, I think doing so relies on a strange interpretation of the plain language of the licenses. To put it bluntly, I think mixing CC-SA images in GFDL Wikipedia articles is already a copyright violation.
However, as far as I know, no copyright holder has ever complained about this mixing, and in the absence of a real ruling of law there is enough ambiguity that one can at least argue the issue. At a philosophical level, most people willing to license CC-BY-SA probably won't mind image use in Wikipedia, but we really ought to ensure compatibility in law and not just compatibility in spirit.
I assume that addressing the dubious compatibility between the two major avenues of copyleft is a central goal associated with the recent Foundation Resolution and the efforts underlying it.
-Robert A. Rohde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l