Anthere (anthere9@yahoo.com) [050109 18:20]:

I may have missed something entirely... Onymous just mentionned on #wikimedia that wikinews was now in public domain. Is that so ? http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

I believe the idea is that while it's being trialled, public domain is the least restrictive possible open content license [*], so it can be made more restrictive later if needed - but it would be difficult retrospectively making it *less* restrictive.

- d.

[*] insofar as PD can be called a 'license', etc., etc.

I may have missed something entirely...

Onymous just mentionned on #wikimedia that wikinews was now in public domain.

Is that so ?

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

Hello Anthere,

Wikinews has been in the public domain ever since it was launched as a demo. Alas, I had forgotten to update MediaWiki:Copyright, so while the edit submission screen said that all edits are in the public domain, the page footer still said that the content is under the FDL. After this was pointed out, I fixed it to be consistent.

We chose the public domain because we do not yet know whether Wikinews will be licensed under a copyleft license. This depends in part on what our experiences will be over the coming weeks with other people using our content. For news, some people argue that the requirements of the GFDL in particular (such as the requirement to reproduce the entire license) place too much of a burden on potential third party users, and that at the very least, a simplified copyleft license such as CC-BY-SA should be supported.

There is a straw poll at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll where currently a majority favors a dual-licensing approach. This is, however, not particularly helpful since the poll does not distinguish between different dual licensing options. We should run an official vote on the matter soon.

If the Board does not suggest another date, I suggest running the vote on February 1.

All best,

Erik