Robin Shannon wrote: 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

Delphine Ménard wrote: 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

Robin Shannon 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. Ec