On 5/9/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: If we can all apply our own interpretations of licenses, what is the point of having them? -Kat -- Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone

On 5/9/07, Andre Engels &lt;andreengels(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Relax. There is no need to panic. Nothing is about to blow up. First off, this isn't a new or unusual interpretation. The FSF's statement is reasonable interpretation from the plain language of the license. It's also the one you would expect based on a comparative analysis with the GPL and our 15 years of experience with that license. It's also a position on the license depended on by many of our photographers, and it is one which has been successfully enforced. It's one that, if not taken, would have caused a lot of anger and dispute. The only reason that it needed to be restated at this time is because Mr. Lessig has been spreading some rather unfortunate misinformation, due to some rather silly politics which some members of the WMF board are being dragged into, one which I expect to get worse with some upcoming events. Until very recently the common position was that both the CC-By-Sa and GFDL worked this way. This is supported by the language of both these licenses, most strongly the GFDL but quite clearly the by-sa as well. Recently the Creative Commons has begun telling people that this is not true about CC-By-Sa, a change which has caused some photographers to abandon this license. The Creative Commons redefinition of SA is part of a continuing trend of Lessig away from copyleft and towards the promotion of Non-Commercial, you can see an explanation for his position in his speech as Wizards of OS4. This is also reflected in the Creative Commons recent position that some forms commercial exploitation of NC works are okay (for example, putting them on an advertising funded site). It is also is supported by the removal of attribution for the creator/copyright holder for works under CC-*-2.5 and above. If we accept the Creative Commons position, that by-sa is not a true copyleft, the only compatibility problem that remains for by-sa works is that the terms of the GFDL are incompatible. However, there is no deep philosophically problem in including the images, it's merely a legal terms issue. We have always understood this to be the case. This is an incompatibility which can be fixed by the FSF in the next release of the FDL (by allowing people to include by-sa-<=2.5 works) and I expect that it will be fixed. It could be fixed even better if cc-by-sa were adjusted to allow the redistribution of by-sa works in GFDL works under the GFDL, thus avoiding the need to use multiple licenses. But we'll have to take one step at a time. As far as our own compatiblity goes, right now I feel reasonably comfortable stating that: 1) The inclusion of by-sa illustrations in non- by-sa texts, fully non-free and FDL alike, is forbidden by the most reasonable reading of the by-sa but fully endorsed by the Creative Commons. As such, I don't feel like we have a problem there. 2) We have supported the use of by-sa illustrations in Wikipedia for a long time. I can make a reasonable argument that the authors of the Wikipedia text have implicitly endorsed this practice of including conceptually but not technically compatible works. Going forward we should continue to strong encourage Wikimedians who release illustrations under by-sa to dual license under the GFDL. This has been a long standing recommendation on commons and it is already widely followed. For a long time it was the *only* accepted practice on enwiki, but someone 'simpilfied' the upload page and removed some important legal text. Contributors lose nothing by doing this. We should also expect that later versions of the FDL will remove the technical incompability here... This is especially easy because the position the by-sa isn't true copyleft means that the fix can be entirely one sided.

On 5/9/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yes... This is *especially* possible now that we have a separate upload page for self-made images on commons. As far as Enwiki, if we created a self-made split like commons has we could do this. We could just switch to using some of the older uploadtext text, such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Uploadtext&oldid=29… But people would still pick the wrong license selector option. ;) But again, I don't think we need to panic on this. It's not news to (most of) us, and we weren't panicked before.

On 5/9/07, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: a troll who is also copyright holder (only copyright holders would have grounds to sue), and who can afford to mount a fight over something so exotic and ruleslawyery? Apparently not... If we did they already have lawsuits already in progress over something else if not this. So, as I said: Relax. Slow, deliberate, wise, and informed steps will ensure the best outcome. :)

On 5/9/07, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I think that would get us lynched. However modifying the en lisence options to make it clear that GFDL and GFDL + CC are the prefered options for image uploads would be reasonable. As would removeing CC-self for commons. -- geni

This is just an interpretation guys, no need to panic and remove license options. I love the CC liscenses, my images are all under them, and furthermore, I consider Lessig to be much, much smarter then anyone working at the FSF, especially Stallman and his holy crusade to rid the world of anything thats not a GNU license (except the LGPL, which also seems to have his ire). On 5/9/07, Yonatan Horan &lt;yonatanh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- -Brock

On 5/9/07, Brock Weller &lt;brock.weller(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: No. It isn't. It's an statement about the obvious, intended, and long understood language of the license by the people who wrote it and have the ability to revise it. It's not a bad thing. Here we agree. I wonder if you actually understand the implications of the current CC licenses? Some people have been rather surprised by them. It is funny that you say that, the FSF has been very friendly, understanding, and accommodating towards us. They understand that their mission and our mission isn't the same and they have made extensive offers to be accommodating to our needs. Enough that I and others have encourage them to move slowly and carefully with us, because we are inexperienced and brash moves won't help anyone. Saying that Stallman is "on a holy crusade to rid the world of anything thats not a GNU license" is inaccurate and unnecessarily hypergolic. RMS disapproves of some of the CC licenses, specifically "developing nations" and "sampling+" because people are so often confuse them for free licenses when they are darn-near all rights reserved. He doesn't want them "rid", he just can't recommend a Creative Commons license when there is chance that it will be misunderstood as one of those. The FSF distributes material released under a number of licenses which are not authored by the FSF, for example the current GNU logo is under the Free Art license. We suffer through the problems created by this confusion on many of our projects every day. Amusingly, based on my discussions with all involved parties, we (as in both our communities and the WMF) take a position on licensing which is generally more restrictive than Mr. Stallman. While RMS agrees that useful material such as documentation, textbooks, and encyclopedias should be under licenses which meet the Definition of Free content, he still sees the use for licenses like cc-by-nc-sa. Everyone I know who is actually involved with licensing discussions has been considered, and fairly reasonable. Please don't embarrass us all by coming off as a complete troll or drama queen. These are complex and nuanced matters with serious long term implications and plenty of opportunities for reasoned disagreement. There is much potential for silly politics, self-promotion, and errors... but only if we allow trolling and incivility to rule our discussions.

On 09/05/07, Gregory Maxwell &lt;gmaxwell(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 1. Could you please go to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse and clarify this in the GFDL section? I wrote that page specifically because I kept getting phone calls asking permission to reuse stuff. It's now linked in all sorts of places ... 2. You say "successfully enforced" - does that mean actual case law? I didn't know there was any about GFDL. 3. How much of a work does a photo infect? If it's in a book, does it infect its own caption? A section? A chapter? The whole book? (This is assuming the GFDL is reprinted in full, credits for photo, etc., per licence.) How much of a book counts as the "work" for these purposes? Is there any case law you know of? - d.

2007/5/9, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt;rg>: Derivative work is derivative work, no matter under what license. If an article with a GFDL image is a derivative of that image, then an article with a CC-BY-SA image is a derivative of that image too. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

On 5/9/07, Andre Engels &lt;andreengels(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There really isn't any reasonable dispute over if an article which combines images and text is a derivative at least not in the FDL space. Some people in CC land have been proposing that almost nothing is a derivative of an image, and if they want to do that.. fine, but they should update the license to reflect that. In theory, CC-by-sa and the GFDL could define derivatives differently. If a license wanted to define derivatives less expansively than the law it could do so... and if it wanted to be more expansive it could also do so (although at that point it would be becoming more of a full contract than just a rights release). Hopefully any license which substantially redefined derivatives wouldn't use the word derivatives. ... because of jurisdictional issues, it's probably best to avoid the word in any case as has been done in GPLv3 draft. In actuality, they both cc-by-sa and GFDL fairly similar language. The words are different and by-sa includes more explanation, but they are quite similar. The difference is that at least on prominent board member of the Creative Commons is suggesting that cc-by-sa is much more permissive than a normal reading of the license text would suggest. Because they have the ability to revise the license, it's worth paying attention to what they say. Meanwhile, the FSF has clarified that this isn't the case for the FDL. In any case, drama and dispute over this matter is making a mountain out of a molehill: Any inability to use by-sa images in a FDL covered work is an unintentional side effect of the license conditions: It is intended that you can't make a later version of a FDL work non-free by enhancing it with works covered by a non-free license. I.e. I can't take wikipedia, pay people to write better intros for the articles and publish GregsProprietaryEncyclopediaand tell Wikipedia that it can't reabsorb my improvements. I think most of us think this is a good feature... or at least those of us who aren't producing XsProprietaryEncyclopedia and who aren't advocating that Wikipedia should be released as "public domain" ;) Since the licenses are a blunt tool this is currently accomplished by requiring that the derivative be distributable under exactly the same license. It's not possible to do this for SA images, so there is a technical incompatibility. There is no serious philosophical or otherwise intentional incompatibility causing this. This is an issue which can and should be fixed in a later version of the license(s), so it's not one which we should worry too much about. This incompatibility is also not a real issue unless a license holder complains. ... and because the incompatibility is technical rather than over a material difference, I don't currently see why someone could complain unless they were just trying to cause trouble... and if someone wants to do that there are plenty of other things they could complain about if that was their goal. Oh, an regarding "fair use" ... Truly "fair use" images have been considered okay for the same reason that we allow them in our projects at all: if they are honestly fair use they don't unfree the document as a whole substantially, and they could only really be replaced with nothing, in any case.