On Dec 3, 2007 7:15 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
No. "History" is an invariant section, and the standard wikimedia copyright statement says that our work is released under the GFDL with no invariant sections.
"History" is not an invariant section.
My interpretation of this could certainly be mistaken. I base it on this passage:
"A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject ... The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them."
With the "History" section being a named appendix that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers/authors to the document. The GFDL does not explicitly say one way or the other whether this is the case.
Also, section 4(b) of the GFDL states that an author may waive their right to be listed as an author on the title page. We encourage people not to invoke this right. We also don't go out of our way to alert them that they can. Also, if you treat wikipedia as a single work (ie, a complete encyclopedia) then the title page for all of wikipedia would only contain the names of 5 authors. I think the board could select an appropriate 5, if there was an issue.
All of this is correct, but tangential to what I said.
Not tangential at all. You said that the GFDL "Requires" that we list at least 5 authors on the title page. My point here is that this is not necessarily the case. authors can opt-out of this requirement, and to my knowledge every wikipedia contributor to date has done so (or at least not explicitly opted-in).
--Andrew Whitworth