Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
Also it would be very important for wikipedia to provide its own license and to allow it to evolve. As a policy matter, I don't believe it's really safe to leave your legal needs within the hands of others like we did with the GNU/FDL (and it would be the same problem with CC).
I'm not sure that a wholly new license, especially one unique to Wikipedia, is such a good idea. In the software world, there are already many complaints about the existence of too many "open source" licenses. The problem may not be quite as great outside of software, but even sorting through just the options available from Creative Commons can be a little challenging, and they heard some concerns about license proliferation when announcing their new CC-Wiki license (Lessig says it's different "brand" rather than a different license).
I think it would be better for us to focus on figuring out how to revise the GFDL, including working up draft proposals ourselves as appropriate. While it's occasionally suggested that there are ongoing talks with FSF and/or CC, perhaps we sometimes expect there's more going on than there really is. Jimbo would hardly have the time to be focusing on these issues constantly, and it's not his field of expertise (the same is true of Richard Stallman, for that matter). Actually generating ideas for them to consider might yield more results.
However, I think branching out completely on our own would require too great an investment of resources. Achieving absolute independence is an appealing sentiment, but the FSF and CC have experience and understanding in this area that would be valuable for us to draw upon. Working with other organizations on these issues also contributes to being a responsible member of the larger free-software/content community.
--Michael Snow
How about this for a draft license:
Wikimedia license 1.0
Preamble, this only exists to give us an escape route if need be
1. Anything distributed under this license must conform to the terms and conditions of the CC-Wiki license or the GFDL license or the CC-BY-SA license.
2. Anything licensed under this license will also be licensed under any later version of this license.
------ If we put that into lawyer language, then we don't really have a proper license, but have the ability to add in another clause in a later version saying "and it must confom to the terms of the foo-licnese". Hence the wikimedia foundation can in effect add a new licnese which which will be backwards compatable when ever the need may come up.
i dont know if this is actually legaly possible, but it might be worth a shot.
paz y amor, -rjs
Robin Shannon wrote:
How about this for a draft license:
Wikimedia license 1.0
Preamble, this only exists to give us an escape route if need be
Anything distributed under this license must conform to the terms and conditions of the CC-Wiki license or the GFDL license or the CC-BY-SA license.
Anything licensed under this license will also be licensed under any later version of this license.
If we put that into lawyer language, then we don't really have a proper license, but have the ability to add in another clause in a later version saying "and it must confom to the terms of the foo-licnese". Hence the wikimedia foundation can in effect add a new licnese which which will be backwards compatable when ever the need may come up.
i dont know if this is actually legaly possible, but it might be worth a shot.
I don't know about the legal possibility, but I would question the ethics. What it's saying is, "It doesn't matter what you agree to because we can unilaterally change it later anyway."
Ec
On 5/21/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robin Shannon wrote:
How about this for a draft license:
Wikimedia license 1.0
Preamble, this only exists to give us an escape route if need be
Anything distributed under this license must conform to the terms and conditions of the CC-Wiki license or the GFDL license or the CC-BY-SA license.
Anything licensed under this license will also be licensed under any later version of this license.
If we put that into lawyer language, then we don't really have a proper license, but have the ability to add in another clause in a later version saying "and it must confom to the terms of the foo-licnese". Hence the wikimedia foundation can in effect add a new licnese which which will be backwards compatable when ever the need may come up.
i dont know if this is actually legaly possible, but it might be worth a shot.
I don't know about the legal possibility, but I would question the ethics. What it's saying is, "It doesn't matter what you agree to because we can unilaterally change it later anyway."
The last part is actually absolutely not legal. Soufron pointed it out earlier, you can't agree to a contract you have not seen. And it makes sense too, what if the people in charge of the "next version" of the licence decided that new version did not allow commercial use, or suddenly were theirs. It is I think what Soufron attempted to point out when he said we should have our own licence, leaving Wikipedia in the hands of "other people" no matter how much we agree with them, carries a part of "unknown" in itself. Not to say that I am for a Wikipedia license, but as it stands today, the GFDL template that stipulates "or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation" (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GFDL) is highly illegal. Or rather, does not make sense.
Delphine
Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 5/21/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robin Shannon wrote:
How about this for a draft license:
Wikimedia license 1.0
Preamble, this only exists to give us an escape route if need be
Anything distributed under this license must conform to the terms and conditions of the CC-Wiki license or the GFDL license or the CC-BY-SA license.
Anything licensed under this license will also be licensed under any later version of this license.
If we put that into lawyer language, then we don't really have a proper license, but have the ability to add in another clause in a later version saying "and it must confom to the terms of the foo-licnese". Hence the wikimedia foundation can in effect add a new licnese which which will be backwards compatable when ever the need may come up.
i dont know if this is actually legaly possible, but it might be worth a shot.
I don't know about the legal possibility, but I would question the ethics. What it's saying is, "It doesn't matter what you agree to because we can unilaterally change it later anyway."
The last part is actually absolutely not legal. Soufron pointed it out earlier, you can't agree to a contract you have not seen. And it makes sense too, what if the people in charge of the "next version" of the licence decided that new version did not allow commercial use, or suddenly were theirs. It is I think what Soufron attempted to point out when he said we should have our own licence, leaving Wikipedia in the hands of "other people" no matter how much we agree with them, carries a part of "unknown" in itself. Not to say that I am for a Wikipedia license, but as it stands today, the GFDL template that stipulates "or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation" (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GFDL) is highly illegal. Or rather, does not make sense.
I noticed that clause with some concern quite some time ago, though I didn't comment on it. Article 10 of the licence deals with furute revisions, and at first glance appears to deal with the point. Nevertheless, even there I am not completely comfortable with it. The article appears to give people a choice about which version whould apply. That's fine when you're dealing with the handful of articles that a person might put onto his personal website, but it creates potential complications when many users are involved. A person who contributes today may not like a GFDL version that appears five years later when he (or his heirs) are no longer reachable.
GFDL version 1.2 was officially published in November 2002; I don't know when the change appeared on Wikipedia pages. This means that only about 300 of our contributors would have been here when version 1.1 was in effect. Many of these, of course, may have only made trivial non-copyrightable changes to the database. I think that the words "or any later version" should be removed from the notice before it starts to matter; as I read the licence such an option would be consistent with the terms of the licence. If at a later time a version 1.3 comes into being it could then be stated that it applies only to contributions made after some specified date.
I favour a Wikipedia licence in principle, but I am extremely wary about heading in that direction. There are just too many dangers. For myself, I have consciously avoided dual licensing my own contributions, because the implications are very unclear.
One egregious omission from the licence is a statement of jurisdiction. What country's (or state's) laws apply. As long as the contributors are all from the same country this is not a big problem. Within the United States copyright is a federal matter so specifying a particular statemay be less important. How the licence would be viewed in foreign courts is a big open question.
Ec
2005/5/22, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
I noticed that clause with some concern quite some time ago, though I didn't comment on it. Article 10 of the licence deals with furute revisions, and at first glance appears to deal with the point. Nevertheless, even there I am not completely comfortable with it. The article appears to give people a choice about which version whould apply. That's fine when you're dealing with the handful of articles that a person might put onto his personal website, but it creates potential complications when many users are involved. A person who contributes today may not like a GFDL version that appears five years later when he (or his heirs) are no longer reachable.
<snip />
Ec
But just because it is avaliable under the next version, doesnt mean it stops being avaliable under the older one. In other words, if i license something under GFDL 1.0, and then in GFDL 2.0 they say no-comercial use (which they wont, but that is not the point), it is still avaliable under 1.0 so that it will forever be able to be used for commerical purposes. In other words, only changes to make the information more free would have a real effect.
paz y amor, -rjs
Robin Shannon wrote:
2005/5/22, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
I noticed that clause with some concern quite some time ago, though I didn't comment on it. Article 10 of the licence deals with future revisions, and at first glance appears to deal with the point. Nevertheless, even there I am not completely comfortable with it. The article appears to give people a choice about which version whould apply. That's fine when you're dealing with the handful of articles that a person might put onto his personal website, but it creates potential complications when many users are involved. A person who contributes today may not like a GFDL version that appears five years later when he (or his heirs) are no longer reachable.
But just because it is avaliable under the next version, doesnt mean
it stops being avaliable under the older one. In other words, if i license something under GFDL 1.0, and then in GFDL 2.0 they say no-comercial use (which they wont, but that is not the point), it is still avaliable under 1.0 so that it will forever be able to be used for commerical purposes. In other words, only changes to make the information more free would have a real effect.
The point is that the clause is like signing a blank cheque. You have no control over the way it will be changed in the future. If you don't opt out of a future change with an explicit statement you will be assumed to have implicitly agreed to the change.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The point is that the clause is like signing a blank cheque. You have no control over the way it will be changed in the future. If you don't opt out of a future change with an explicit statement you will be assumed to have implicitly agreed to the change.
But we *do* agree to the change, and we require all contributors to agree to the change. That's why the "or any later version" clause is important and so should remain on the site quite prominently.
If we eliminated the "or any later version" requirement, we would be permanently stuck with the terms of the present version of the license, terms which I think most people agree are inconvenient in some important ways.
--Jimbo
Also it would be very important for wikipedia to provide its own license and to allow it to evolve. As a policy matter, I don't believe it's really safe to leave your legal needs within the hands of others like we did with the GNU/FDL (and it would be the same problem with CC).
I'm not sure that a wholly new license, especially one unique to Wikipedia, is such a good idea. In the software world, there are already many complaints about the existence of too many "open source" licenses. The problem may not be quite as great outside of software, but even sorting through just the options available from Creative Commons can be a little challenging, and they heard some concerns about license proliferation when announcing their new CC- Wiki license (Lessig says it's different "brand" rather than a different license).
I think it would be better for us to focus on figuring out how to revise the GFDL, including working up draft proposals ourselves as appropriate. While it's occasionally suggested that there are ongoing talks with FSF and/or CC, perhaps we sometimes expect there's more going on than there really is. Jimbo would hardly have the time to be focusing on these issues constantly, and it's not his field of expertise (the same is true of Richard Stallman, for that matter). Actually generating ideas for them to consider might yield more results.
However, I think branching out completely on our own would require too great an investment of resources. Achieving absolute independence is an appealing sentiment, but the FSF and CC have experience and understanding in this area that would be valuable for us to draw upon. Working with other organizations on these issues also contributes to being a responsible member of the larger free-software/content community.
Well, I am not afraid of being faced with a great number of licenses, but I am afraid of poorly designed ones. Except that, I agree with you, there is no need to "fork" from other licensors but we should be really become more involved in the processes. Either with CC or with the FSF.
Michael Snow wrote:
While it's occasionally suggested that there are ongoing talks with FSF and/or CC, perhaps we sometimes expect there's more going on than there really is. Jimbo would hardly have the time to be focusing on these issues constantly, and it's not his field of expertise (the same is true of Richard Stallman, for that matter). Actually generating ideas for them to consider might yield more results.
Actually my sense is that people think that there is _less_ going on than there actually is.
--Jimbo
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