I have been put words in my mouth here that I never said. I was only reacting to Mav who claimed that free meant copyleft, thus claiming that CC-BY or PD is _not_ free, or at least _less_ free than copyleft. NEVER did I claim that copyleft was NOT free. All I claimed was that things that are NOT copyleft can still be free.
Andre Engels
"Toby Bartels" toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu schrieb:
Andre Engels wrote in part:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
I'm advocating the full use of the word free (no cost and copyleft).
Then you have a strange meaning of 'free'.
"You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name" is more free than "You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name and give others the same rights and obligations".
The Free Software Foundation would argue that the final condition is not a significant restriction on the downstream user's freedoms. Thus they would say that CC-by and GNU FDL ''are'' free, period. And certainly the latter condition makes it more certain that future derived works will in fact be free at all.
I think that it's healthier to take a less absolute stance. There is (or was, I don't know the latest developments) a big debate in the Debian project about whether the GNU FDL is free when it's combined with Invariant Sections. (For example, the FSF's own GNU emacs manual has an IS. Certainly the FSF believes that this is free, but many people in the Debian community disagree.) What they ''should'' be able to agree on, to get started, is that the GNU FDL is ''less'' free when used with an IS; then they can start discussing whether it's free ''enough''. But since most debaters take an absolutist position on the criteria for freedom, they can't even get started.
So an unlicensed copyright is less free than GNU FDL with an IS, and GNU FDL with an IS is less free than GNU FDL without an IS, and GNU FDL without an IS is (arguably [*]) less free than CC-by-sa, and CC-by-sa is less free than CC-by, and CC-by is less free than PD. But on the other hand, there are ''reasons'' for each of the restrictions, including reasons that restrictions that may increase freedom overall. So the question for any project (GNU, Debian, Wikimedia, etc) is not "free or not free" but "how free is free enough"? GNU and Debian are answering this differently, and that's OK. Within Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Wikinews may answer this differently too!
[*] This has to do with the "overbroad DRM clause" in the GNU FDL. It is a subtle point that only the extreme anti-FDL people care about; but even so, people should be able to agree that it makes a difference to ''relative'' freedom.
-- Toby
I have been put words in my mouth here that I never said. I was only reacting to Mav who claimed that free meant copyleft, thus claiming that CC-BY or PD is _not_ free, or at least _less_ free than copyleft. NEVER did I claim that copyleft was NOT free. All I claimed was that things that are NOT copyleft can still be free.
I am not sure which words you mean.
You did NOT say that a copyleft licence like CC-by-sa or GNU FDL is NOT free, but you DID say that such a licence is LESS free than CC-by. At least I'm pretty sure that you said this, as follows:
"You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name" is more free than "You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name and give others the same rights and obligations".
In other words, CC-by is more free than CC-by-sa.
And I agree with you!
The FSF, as far as I can tell, would not agree with you and me, because they draw a strict line between "free" and "not free". They (or at least RMS) see the issue in black and white, no grey. Thus I wrote of the FSF:
They would say that CC-by and GNU FDL ''are'' free, period.
(Here, "period" -- or "full stop" -- has a colloquial meaning which implies that there is nothing further to be said on the matter.)
This is in contrast to what I would say (and what I think that you said above), which is more nuanced:
GNU FDL and CC-by-sa are more free than an unlicensed copyright, and CC-by is more free than GNU FDL and CC-by-sa.
[I paraphrased the original a great deal here.]
(I should also mention that I may be being unfair to to the FSF here. For one thing, the FSF isn't the same this thing as Richard Stallman; there are many, many members of the FSF -- including me, after all. And RMS's position may be more nuanced than what I'm getting from reading his stuff on the GNU web site.)
Mav's position, as he is stating it, is more extreme (and simply wrong IMO), since he is claiming (I believe) that a noncopyleft licence like CC-sa is not free to begin with. Still, mav does have a point, as I said here:
There are ''reasons'' for each of the restrictions, including reasons that the restrictions may increase freedom overall.
[I've corrected a typographical error in the original here.]
So mav can reasonably argue (along with the FSF) that a copyleft licence increases freedom overall, because it enforces freedom for derivative works. But it does not increase the freedom of the ''original'' document -- as even the FSF would agree -- and could only decrease ''that'' freedom. (And that was your point, Andre, which I agree with.)
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Mav's position, as he is stating it, is more extreme (and simply wrong IMO), since he is claiming (I believe) that a noncopyleft licence like CC-sa is not free to begin with. Still, mav does have a point, as I said here:
If CC-sa = Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license, then I think you are confused (or at least made a typo). The CC by-sa is in fact more libre/copyleft than the GNU FDL since it does not have provisions for invariant sections. Thus its copyleft status is more permanent. The CC-by license is merely gratis with the only real requirement being attribution.
There are ''reasons'' for each of the restrictions, including reasons that the restrictions may increase freedom overall.
[I've corrected a typographical error in the original here.]
So mav can reasonably argue (along with the FSF) that a copyleft licence increases freedom overall, because it enforces freedom for derivative works. But it does not increase the freedom of the ''original'' document -- as even the FSF would agree -- and could only decrease ''that'' freedom. (And that was your point, Andre, which I agree with.)
Decrease that freedom? How when anything from a derivative work can be reincorporated back into the original? In what way does that decrease the freedom of the original document?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Mav's position, as he is stating it, is more extreme (and simply wrong IMO), since he is claiming (I believe) that a noncopyleft licence like CC-sa is not free to begin with.
If CC-sa = Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license, then I think you are confused (or at least made a typo).
Yeah, call it a typo. I had written CC-by-sa (the copyleft one) before, and then I meant to remove the letters that added the copyleft bit. This should have left me with CC-by (the free but not copyleft licence), but I removed the wrong letters. Sorry about that!
So mav can reasonably argue (along with the FSF) that a copyleft licence increases freedom overall, because it enforces freedom for derivative works. But it does not increase the freedom of the ''original'' document -- as even the FSF would agree -- and could only decrease ''that'' freedom.
Decrease that freedom? How when anything from a derivative work can be reincorporated back into the original? In what way does that decrease the freedom of the original document?
No, ''that'' doesn't decrease the freedom of the document -- it's other effects of the copyleft that do so.
I'll give a specific (albeit still hypothetical) example:
Suppose that there are two free documents that I like, one of which uses the GNU FDL licence, one of which uses CC-by-sa. I want to combine these two free documents into a single modified one. Even though both of them are supposed to be free, I can't do this! But if either of these documents uses the noncopyleft CC-by instead, then I am able to do what I want to do with the documents. The CC-by licence is more free; it gives me more freedoms.
This is not to say that I'm completely out of luck; CC and GNU are working more closely together, and Wikimedia may well yet put the pressure on RMS that's needed to make the GNU FDL compatible with CC-by-sa. But right now, the fact remains that I have more freedom -- more ability to modify a document that I rightfully possess -- if that document uses the noncopyleft CC-by licence.
That said, it may still be true that the world is more free in the end if the documents use the copyleft licences -- that all depends on whether they would be coopted by proprietary writers if they're CC-by. But the documents themselves are still less free if they're copyleft.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
No, ''that'' doesn't decrease the freedom of the document -- it's other effects of the copyleft that do so.
I'll give a specific (albeit still hypothetical) example:
Suppose that there are two free documents that I like, one of which uses the GNU FDL licence, one of which uses CC-by-sa. I want to combine these two free documents into a single modified one. Even though both of them are supposed to be free, I can't do this! But if either of these documents uses the noncopyleft CC-by instead, then I am able to do what I want to do with the documents. The CC-by licence is more free; it gives me more freedoms.
Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the content since the CC-by text could just as easily be made into a proprietary derivative work while the FDL and CC-by/sa text can only ever be libre (at least until their copyright expires, which if Disney has its say will be never). Fixing the compatibility issue is a major problem that must be corrected, however.
Correcting that is my plan A since it has the largest payoff in the end (a world in which the best representation of knowledge is not controllable). Using a license of convenience in the interim would be a bad idea since works under that license will not be copyleft, thus making derivative works of them susceptible to proprietary control.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Suppose that there are two free documents that I like, one of which uses the GNU FDL licence, one of which uses CC-by-sa. I want to combine these two free documents into a single modified one. Even though both of them are supposed to be free, I can't do this! But if either of these documents uses the noncopyleft CC-by instead, then I am able to do what I want to do with the documents. The CC-by licence is more free; it gives me more freedoms.
Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the content
The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content. It may well be that this limitation on freedom is justified, given the substandard world of incompatible licences (and the even more fundamentally substandard world where proprietary control is possible at all), but we're only deluding ourselves if we pretend that it's not any limitation on freedom whatsoever.
Fixing the compatibility issue is a major problem that must be corrected, however.
Correcting that is my plan A since it has the largest payoff in the end (a world in which the best representation of knowledge is not controllable).
I certainly agree that this plan has the largest pay off, but I worry that your talk of "plan A" and a superlative comparison may introduce a false dichotomy. One may be able to pursue both a plan A and a plan B at the same time. In particular, there's no conflict with doing both plans if plan B inolves:
Using a license of convenience in the interim would be a bad idea since works under that license will not be copyleft, thus making derivative works of them susceptible to proprietary control.
Is this a serious issue with Wikinews? I'm not at all convinced that it will be, while a complicated licence like GNU FDL has potential problems in getting used like AP and Reuters are used by news sources.
I don't know if that problem is significant, and we certainly don't have to decide Wikinews now. But remember why this conversation started (this time): the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence "like the GNU FDL". We need to decide what "free" means here. And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense that includes «copyleft» in addition to «free» in the sense of GNU.
I don't believe that we should rule out a priori the possibility that a project like Wikinews might not want copyleft. It's one thing to argue, when Wikinews policy discussions are beginning, that it too will best be served by a copyleft licence. It's quite another thing to insist on that as a matter of policy. If it were up to me, I'd keep the language "free" that we have, while clarifying that we mean in the sense of the Free Software Foundation, nothing more.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the content
The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content. It may well be that this limitation on freedom is justified, given the substandard world of incompatible licences (and the even more fundamentally substandard world where proprietary control is possible at all), but we're only deluding ourselves if we pretend that it's not any limitation on freedom whatsoever.
I disagree and maintain that the expression of knowledge in content almost has a 'life' (metaphorically speaking) of its own and deserves to be free from proprietary control. If derivative works are not ensured freedom from proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop improving that content.
Much of our effort would be used to feed a black hole instead of being continually reused and expanded.
... I don't know if that problem is significant, and we certainly don't have to decide Wikinews now. But remember why this conversation started (this time): the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence "like the GNU FDL". We need to decide what "free" means here. And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense that includes �copyleft� in addition to �free� in the sense of GNU.
The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such as the CC by-sa).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content.
I disagree and maintain that the expression of knowledge in content almost has a 'life' (metaphorically speaking) of its own and deserves to be free from proprietary control.
It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life" of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth. But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''. Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings, not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles (except, of course, in a metaphorical sense). Similarly, it is only people that "deserve" free content; abstract ideas do not "deserve" anything for themselves. This is why organisations like the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian project, etc, etc, etc define freedom of software code, manuals, documentation, and so forth in terms of what ''people'' can do with them.
Now we are getting highly philosophical, perhaps. So I will focus on your down-to-earth factual statement:
If derivative works are not ensured freedom from proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop improving that content.
And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.
I believe that it was Erik that argued that WikiNews would not be picked up by newspapers that rely on wire services (like Reuters, AP, etc) if it's GNU FDL or otherwise copyleft. (Traditional news feeds are copyright and their subscribers must pay.) Now, Erik may or may not be correct about this -- perhaps Internet news services are what really matter, and perhaps they would be perfectly happy to put their stories under the GNU FDL if that means that they can use WikiNews gratis, perhaps it will even turn out that the New York Times will publish copyleft stories in order to make use of WikiNews feeds, once those become superior to the proprietary news services. But it's hardly obvious (not to me) that Erik is wrong. So let's suppose for the sake of argument that he's correct.
Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa, and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others. When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free, and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two, as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles. Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now. However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by, and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites. These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works, which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source. Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two, generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles, even though their edits are limited to their own material. Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
The upshot of this hypothetical situation is this: There are ''two'' components (at least) to the level of feedback. One is whether every derivative work can be fed back, and a copyleft insures that this condition will be met. But another is whether the original work receives a wide audience, and freer document (in the strict literal sense of what people are allowed to do with it) will generally lead to wider distribution. Which of these effects is greater will depend on the circumstances.
Much of our effort would be used to feed a black hole instead of being continually reused and expanded.
There won't be much of a black hole with WikiNews. This wouldn't be like Microsoft's habit of incorporating free (but noncopyleft) BSD code into proprietary Windows code, which causes Microsoft's best work to be unethically derived from the free/open software community (or so RMS charges). After a day or two, a WikiNews article would be worthless to a black hole like MSN. This is not to say that there is no problem, but it does not build up like encyclopaedia articles or literal black holes do.
I do not want to argue that WikiNews would be better of with CC-by. I'm not in a position to judge that, and it's only hypothetical now. In fact, I don't believe that ''anybody'' is taking such a strong position. And since I have no intention of working on WikiNews in the first place, I really doubt that I'll even be involved in that discussion. The point is, we don't have to decide now. But we should not set Wikimedia policy ahead of time to say that copyleft licences are better, because after due consideration, that may not turn out to be so.
But remember why this conversation started (this time): the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence "like the GNU FDL". We need to decide what "free" means here. And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense that includes «copyleft» in addition to «free» in the sense of GNU.
The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such as the CC by-sa).
That's obviously not an absolute statement; the English term "like" is very vague. You might as well argue that the GNU FDL is written by the Free Software Foundation, so anything "like it" must also be written by the FSF (which the CC-by-sa, of course, is not).
I assume that what you mean is that, IYO, the copyleft feature of the GNU FDL is vitally important, while the written-by-FSF feature is not vitally important. In contrast, I would say that even copyleft is not vital, while the free (in the strict FSF sense) feature is vital.
Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft, you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anthère. Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore -- we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues -- I'll bring this to their attention (after checking that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^
-- Toby
Toby-
Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft, you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anthère. Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore -- we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues -- I'll bring this to their attention (after checking that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^
Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view. The rift in opinion between "copyleft" and "attribution-only" likely exists across the whole Wikimedia community. A project-wide vote may be useful.
However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result from adopting a copyleft license: for example, Wikipedia content could no longer be combined with such material (unless you want to end up with documents where only part of them is dual-licensed as non-copyleft). This is a huge deal with repercussions many years down the line, so we should consider very carefully if the additional exposure we can gain from a non- copyleft license justifies such a change.
I agree with Mav that first and foremost, we need to work with the FSF towards simplifying the FDL for our purposes, perhaps just as an FDL 2.0, or using his FCL migration clause idea.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote in effect:
However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result from adopting a non-copyleft license
A CC-by project could become a CC-by-sa project any time that it wished. If the incompatibilities between CC-by-sa and GNU FDL are worked out, then it could become a GNU FDL project.
This is not to say that any such change would go smoothly, because there would doubtless be resistance from some users to any change. ^_^
-- Toby
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view. The rift in opinion between "copyleft" and "attribution-only" likely exists across the whole Wikimedia community. A project-wide vote may be useful. ...
Thank you Erik.
Even if I did have that type of power or influence (which I do not have and will not even if I am elected trustee), I would not ram something through in direct opposition to the community's wishes. That would only alienate many people and possibly fragment the whole project. However, I will continue to argue my position when I see it is needed. If I am overruled, then so be it, I'll just make sure my opposition is on record.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Erik Moeller wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore, I'll bring this to their attention (after checking that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^
Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view.
I hope that I haven't given anybody the wrong impression, because I agree entirely with what Erik says here. The way to "stop [mav]" is to stop him from convincing everybody else that he's correct, nothing more than that!
I agree with Mav that first and foremost, we need to work with the FSF towards simplifying the FDL for our purposes, perhaps just as an FDL 2.0, or using his FCL migration clause idea.
To work things out with the FSF for our benefit would be ideal. I don't want to finalise a policy that rules things out ahead of time, which is why I've been doing all this discussion and argument. But it'll be fantastic if the issue never comes up in practice because Jimmy and Stallman and Lessig make everything perfect. I don't have much faith that it ''will'' be worked out, but it's times like these that I like to be wrong!
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life" of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth. But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''. Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings, not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles (except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).
Knowledge should not be owned, nor should the expression of that knowledge, IMO. But we live in a world where the norm *is* ownership of that expression, so we play the game but reverse the rules in order to free the content.
...
If derivative works are not ensured freedom from proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop improving that content.
And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.
The statement is true since all improvements that create derivative works from copyleft content can be re-incorporated back into the original. That is positive feedback. However if the original were under an attribution license, then many of those derivative works will be proprietary and thus any improvements made to them could not be re-incorporated back into the original. That would not be positive feedback.
... Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa, and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others. When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free, and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two, as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles. Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now. However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by, and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites. These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works, which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source. Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two, generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles, even though their edits are limited to their own material. Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
Let's not just assume that copyleft content would fail to attract attention - Wikipedia has already proved that copyleft material *can* attract a lot of attention and can be copied all over the place (including on many otherwise proprietary content websites). *If* a copyleft Wikinews project did not do well and we suspected it was due to the license, then we could talk about the possibility of changing. Due to the nature of news articles, a future change of license would not be such a big deal.
But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license. The CC by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version) or my proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.
Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia, an interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the GNU FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of that work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article, but we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be an interim solution).
...
The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft
(such
as the CC by-sa).
That's obviously not an absolute statement; the English term "like" is very vague.
Exactly, thus I stated 'IMO.' It is my interpretation from reading stuff like:
|The goal of Wikipedia is to create an information source in an encyclopedia |format that is freely available. The license we use grants free access to our |content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle |is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, |modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same |freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used |(a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). |Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by |anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that |freedom.
Notice use of the word 'copyleft' (which is even bolded), the phrase 'so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others' and the term 'free forever'.
I will not support any license whereby a downstream user could make a derivative work of our content and be able to not grant us the same freedoms over that work.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life" of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth. But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''. Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings, not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles (except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).
Knowledge should not be owned, nor should the expression of that knowledge, IMO. But we live in a world where the norm *is* ownership of that expression, so we play the game but reverse the rules in order to free the content.
Yes, I understand the reasons for copyleft. We limit minor freedoms of the document's readers (like combining with another document that has a different copyleft licence) in order to keep major freedoms for everybody (like distributing a derived work based on the original document). The copylefter reserves copyright rights only for the purpose of preventing other people from reserving copyright rights, analogously to using violence only in self defence. (Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence, and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work. But I refuse to condemn those who choose differently from me.)
Mav wrote:
If derivative works are not ensured freedom from proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop improving that content.
And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.
The statement is true since all improvements that create derivative works from copyleft content can be re-incorporated back into the original. That is positive feedback. However if the original were under an attribution license, then many of those derivative works will be proprietary and thus any improvements made to them could not be re-incorporated back into the original. That would not be positive feedback.
I understand this argument, but it is not valid as it stands. To make this argument work, you have to explain why a copyleft document will always attract as much derivative work as the same document distributed under a free non-copyleft licence.
This is certainly not true in general! Taking the Snow White example, the Walt Disney Company, given its profit motives, would not make as many derivative works from public domain (hence free but not copyleft) fairy tales if its derivative movies had to be free as well. Yet the free fairy tale community gets some feedback from Disney, since the Disney characters are now available for some uses in parodies. This is an extreme example, and all things considered, I would be much happier if Disney didn't make any movies, if that meant that the movies that other people ''did'' make would all be free. But I will not pretend that copyright serves no purpose at all -- it ''does'' encourage creation by people motivated by profit (as we all are to some extent).
Let's not just assume that copyleft content would fail to attract attention.
I am not making this assumption. I am only considering the ''possibility'' (and that only relatively -- copyleft might attract ''less'' attention). You're assuming that a copyleft document will attract as much attention as a free-but-not-copyleft document; that is the only way that your argument beginning "The statement is true [...]" above will go through. I am refusing to make any assumption one way or another. Thus I am not advocating that WikiNews use a non-copyleft licence. I am only advocating that the Wikimedia Foundation adopt a policy that (implicitly is enough) allows for a non-copyleft (but free) licence.
I like this text suggested by Erik (Eloquence): http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-May/000222.html
"All text on Wikimedia projects will be under a license which allows free distribution and modification by anyone. The image copyright policies are set by individual projects."
(I guess that I'd like the image language to be somewhat stronger, but I'm not really sure how to improve it -- that's famously tricky.)
*If* a copyleft Wikinews project did not do well and we suspected it was due to the license, then we could talk about the possibility of changing. Due to the nature of news articles, a future change of license would not be such a big deal.
This is true. I'm not very worried about how WikiNews is licensed; but it's fresh ground for coming up with hypothetical scenarios.
But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license.
I'm not sure that it's even that bad. Standard policy with the GNU GPL is to place the license in a separate file, and the GNU FDL allows aggregates, so a newspaper should be able to include several FDL articles in its pages, each with the brief statement that its licence may be found on page A2.
The CC by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version) or my proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.
The CC 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, like no upgrade clause. (Similarly, the GNU 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, but they are much older so we don't remember that. ^_^) The CC-sa 2.0 licences now do have an upgrade clause, like the GNU FDL (which of course is a very good thing for your GNU FCL proposal).
Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia, an interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the GNU FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of that work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article, but we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be an interim solution).
I wouldn't want to rely on being able to fix the incompatibility, so I'd want any interim solution to be viable indefinitely. That said, this solution probably ''is'' viable indefinitely. If a dual-licensed project ever wants to change to a single licence, then it can do so any time that the users wish.
The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such as the CC by-sa).
That's obviously not an absolute statement; the English term "like" is very vague.
Exactly, thus I stated 'IMO.' It is my interpretation
OK, fair enough. The relevance of the vaguness is that the statement as it stands is not explicit, so that your interpretation isn't the only possibility. But this thread began with Anthère asking for a clarification, so we're discussing how the statement ought to be clarified. If it's clarified, then there will no longer be any vagueness.
I will not support any license whereby a downstream user could make a derivative work of our content and be able to not grant us the same freedoms over that work.
Of course, I might support one (and indeed have, on various occasions unconnected with Wikimedia). Someday I may even try to convince you to. But right now, I only want to convince you that the Wikimedia Foundation shall not adopt a policy that it will ''never'' support one.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
(Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence, and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.
Then it looks like neither of us will be able to convince the other.
... This is certainly not true in general! Taking the Snow White example, the Walt Disney Company, given its profit motives, would not make as many derivative works from public domain (hence free but not copyleft) fairy tales if its derivative movies had to be free as well. Yet the free fairy tale community gets some feedback from Disney, since the Disney characters are now available for some uses in parodies. This is an extreme example, and all things considered, I would be much happier if Disney didn't make any movies, if that meant that the movies that other people ''did'' make would all be free.
The comparison to public domain (merely gratis) content is not relevant to the issue of copyleft (libre). I have in fact been arguing against using attribution licenses (which essentially are grants into the public domain but with the requirement of attribution - thus there still is need for a license).
But I will not pretend that copyright serves no purpose at all -- it ''does'' encourage creation by people motivated by profit (as we all are to some extent).
Yes, that is true.
... Thus I am not advocating that WikiNews use a non-copyleft licence. I am only advocating that the Wikimedia Foundation adopt a policy that (implicitly is enough) allows for a non-copyleft (but free) licence.
And on that point we will continue to argue.
...
But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license.
I'm not sure that it's even that bad. Standard policy with the GNU GPL is to place the license in a separate file, and the GNU FDL allows aggregates, so a newspaper should be able to include several FDL articles in its pages, each with the brief statement that its licence may be found on page A2.
The FDL is still several pages long and will take up at least one newsprint column that could have been used for an advertisement. With the cost of newsprint, ink, labor, and the small profit margins of most newspapers, I doubt they would be willing to give up that space (even for no-cost content). This is a serious issue with the FDL that needs to be fixed.
The CC by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version) or my proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.
The CC 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, like no upgrade clause. (Similarly, the GNU 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, but they are much older so we don't remember that. ^_^) The CC-sa 2.0 licences now do have an upgrade clause, like the GNU FDL (which of course is a very good thing for your GNU FCL proposal).
That is good to hear.
Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia,
an
interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the
GNU
FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of
that
work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article,
but
we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be
an
interim solution).
I wouldn't want to rely on being able to fix the incompatibility, so I'd want any interim solution to be viable indefinitely. That said, this solution probably ''is'' viable indefinitely. If a dual-licensed project ever wants to change to a single licence, then it can do so any time that the users wish.
That is a good fallback position.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
(Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence, and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.
Then it looks like neither of us will be able to convince the other.
I don't see why not, because this is not the basis for my position. There was another sentence in the paragraph, after all:
But I refuse to condemn those who choose differently from me.)
I'm not arguing that violence in self defence is immoral, and I would not use that argument to convince somebody to refuse violence in self defence (to my parents regret). What I choose for myself is not necessarily required for everybody. Similarly, in this conversation I'm not making a moral argument against reserving copy rights in ultimate defence of copy freedom. Everything that I've said is based on pragmatic considerations, and if you convince me that my arguments on ''that'' basis are wrong, then I will acquiesce and not switch to moral arguments.
This is not to say that I never made moral/ethical arguments. But your position is beyond any ethical objections from me.
The comparison to public domain (merely gratis) content is not relevant to the issue of copyleft (libre). I have in fact been arguing against using attribution licenses (which essentially are grants into the public domain but with the requirement of attribution - thus there still is need for a license).
But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant! The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft. And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works more readily than copyleft material is. So it is not correct to say that copyleft doesn't inhibit the creation of derivative works, or more generally that it can never inhibit positive feedback. Only a balance between its ''two'' effects: fewer derivative works, but a greater percentage (indeed all) of those derivative works becoming available for feedback.
I'm comparing copyleft to non-copyleft here, to see which will give more positive feedback. (You say that copyleft always gives more positive feedback, while I say that it may depend on the circumstances.) That's why I discussed a public domain example; it's the example from the non-copyleft side.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
... But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant! The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft. And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works more readily than copyleft material is. ...
Copyleft for content has existed for a very small part of the history of copyright, so I wouldn't expect anything else at this point. The volume of PD content vs copyleft content also does not compare (lots more PD but most of it isn't very good).
My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never be combined to create something better. Effort is wasted making the same improvements in many different ways when that effort ''could'' have been condensed and combined into a smaller set of forks that could exchange bits and pieces back and forth as needed. The time saved could be used to write more content or further improve the wording of the old.
Proprietary forks dilute effort permanently while improvements to copyleft forks can be backported to the original - or any other copyleft fork for that matter. Thus copyleft encourages the freer exchange of knowledge (PD and attribution-only licenses encourage the exchange in just one direction).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant! The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft. And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works more readily than copyleft material is.
Copyleft for content has existed for a very small part of the history of copyright, so I wouldn't expect anything else at this point. The volume of PD content vs copyleft content also does not compare (lots more PD but most of it isn't very good).
Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work. But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.
My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never be combined to create something better.
Even in the case of Disney, this is not entirely true! Disney's proprietary fork on the Snow White fairy tale feeds back to the free storytellers' community in parodies. That's not very much, and as I indicated in my previous post, I'd be much happier if Disney couldn't create such forks. But even this situation is not as absolute as you claim.
The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better. But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact, that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't. The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less. The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.
Effort is wasted making the same improvements in many different ways when that effort ''could'' have been condensed and combined into a smaller set of forks that could exchange bits and pieces back and forth as needed. The time saved could be used to write more content or further improve the wording of the old.
Proprietary forks dilute effort permanently while improvements to copyleft forks can be backported to the original - or any other copyleft fork for that matter. Thus copyleft encourages the freer exchange of knowledge (PD and attribution-only licenses encourage the exchange in just one direction).
Let's go through the argument carefully:
* There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B). * Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works can be fed back into the original programme. * Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back, while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not. * Conclusion: More deriviative works will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
Please let me know if I'm misstating your position!
Now, this conclusion does not in fact follow. Here is a conclusion that ''does'' follow: * Valid conclusion: A greater proportion of derivative works will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
* Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).
But that premise is certainly false in many situations! I rather doubt this premise would be true for WikiNews; even CC-by-sa would not be as attractive as CC-by to a printed paper. In fact, judging from the way that people have misused Wikipedia, I don't think that it's even true for Wikipedia; surely even more people would create improperly FDLed forks if that were legal!
Now, this doesn't at all mean that your original conclusion is false. The argument is invalid, but the conclusion may still be true. I'm confident that the missing premise is false quite often, but I'm not so certain that the original conclusion is ever false. Erik gave a vague argument as to why it might be false for WikiNews, which you didn't accept -- and I'm just not sure about it either way. (As a matter of fact, I don't even believe that Erik is sure about it; he just described how it ''might'' be false.)
In other words, I'm confident that WikiNews would be used more often to create derivative works if it's not copyleft (B) than if it is (A). But since many of the derivative works under possibility (B) would not be useful for positive feedback, I obviously can't conclude that possibility (A) will actually result in less positive feedback. But by the same token, you can't assume that it will result in more. It's a matter of how the effects will balance.
Now, I don't intend to convince you that your conclusion is ''ever'' false. I'm only pointing out that we cannot know that it will ''always'' be true. In that case, it would be foolish to adopt a Foundation policy that is based on the assumption that the conclusion is always true. The wording that Erik suggested leaves our choices open.
In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence. But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections, then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote: Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work. But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.
Even if they did the situation for their original work would be the same: It would have fallen into the public domain by the time Disney got their hands onto it.
My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never
be
combined to create something better.
Even in the case of Disney, this is not entirely true! Disney's proprietary fork on the Snow White fairy tale feeds back to the free storytellers' community in parodies. That's not very much, and as I indicated in my previous post, I'd be much happier if Disney couldn't create such forks. But even this situation is not as absolute as you claim.
When content goes into the public domain anybody can do whatever they want with it. This is especially fine by me for reference works since by the time its copyright expires it is already old and probably way out of date. I see nothing wrong with that. I just want to make sure that before that happens the reference content Wikimedia creates is protected by copyleft. Eventually all Wikimedia content will also enter the public domain, but so long as derivative works are being made, then the most recent and useful versions of that content will be copyleft.
The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better. But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact, that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't. The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less. The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.
Hm. Proving a negative. Interesting logic. Prove to me that UFOs do not exist! ;)
Let's go through the argument carefully:
- There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B).
- Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works can be fed back into the original programme.
- Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back, while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not.
- Conclusion: More deriviative works will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
Yes, possibility B creates more forks. Exactly my point - thank you for proving it for me. :) Under possibility B the number of content forks (not just mirrors) is greatly increased, thus update energy is diluted. Under possibility A update energy is concentrated on a smaller number of forks and when there are forks any modifications made to them can be used by all the others. This reduces duplicated effort and gives more time to create more content (mirrors will and abridged versions will also propogate all over the place). Let me illustrate:
All content created by U.S. federal employees as part of their work immediately goes into the public domain. But this work is very often rather rough and needs to be fixed and streamlined - which thousands of different organizations and individuals do (there is a whole industry for this surrounding census and GIS data). And by default, none of those improvements can be back-ported to improve the original or any other fork.
As a matter of fact, I've never heard of this ever happening for federal data (I'm sure it has, but not on any significant scale I've seen). Yet, by default, anything under a copyleft license *can* be backported to improve the original or any other fork. This encourages cooperation and discourages forks. That in turn increases the number of eyes on any particular version of the content.
Now, this conclusion does not in fact follow. Here is a conclusion that ''does'' follow:
- Valid conclusion: A greater proportion of derivative works will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
- Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).
If I indicated that (which I'm pretty sure I did not), then I was mistaken. See above why having a greater number of derivative works is a bad thing and why copyleft discourages that by default whereas PD and attribution-only encourages it. What matters is the amount of effort that goes into creating the content vs the number of end users who use the information contained in it.
... In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence. But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections, then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.
By-laws can be changed by a simple majority of the trustees. If in the future we find that a particular project, such as Wikinews, isn't doing so well and we suspect it is the fact that it is using a copyleft license, then a change can be made to make an exception.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work. But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.
Even if they did the situation for their original work would be the same: It would have fallen into the public domain by the time Disney got their hands onto it.
Well, if we're going to consider what it might have been like if copyleft had been thought of back in the Grimms' day, then we might as well consider what it might have been like if copyrights had lasted as long then as they do now. If so, then the standard 7th edition could still have been copyright when Disney made his movie. ^_^
Of course, the point is not what the Grimms' ''should'' have done; they had no choice in the matter. The point is what would have happened under various circumstances. Such hypothesising won't be very historical.
The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better. But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact, that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't. The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less. The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.
Hm. Proving a negative. Interesting logic. Prove to me that UFOs do not exist! ;)
You smile, but this would be an absolutely legitimate demand if I were to propose a policy that would only be a good policy if UFOs did not exist.
Keep in mind, you're the one that's proposing a stricter policy. So it's no surprise that I'm asking you to justify assumptions that go into making that policy!
Of course, you don't really have to ''prove'' anything absolutely; in this analogy, it'd enough to explain why UFOs are implausible. And it's quite possible that I could do that, if I had to.
Let's go through the argument carefully:
- There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B).
- Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works
can be fed back into the original programme.
- Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back,
while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not.
- Conclusion: More derivative works will be available for positive feedback
under (A) than under (B).
Yes, possibility B creates more forks. Exactly my point - thank you for proving it for me. :)
Aargh!!! No, I did ''not'' prove it for you!
I went through the argument carefully, so that anybody could see that in fact the conclusion remains ''unproven''. I mean, the conclusion definitely does not follow from the argument that I wrote above!
There is a difference between «greater proportion» (proven) and «greater amount» (unproven). Ignoring this difference leads to a host of statistical fallacies.
However, all of this may be moot now:
Under possibility B the number of content forks (not just mirrors) is greatly increased, thus update energy is diluted.
Now, ''this'' is a new argument. This is a premise that I never stated, and I never noticed before that you were claiming it to be true. So now maybe this will fill in the logical gap! ^_^
So, let me see if I have this straight. First, you're saying that there will be more derivative works with (B) than with (A). I have to agree that I find this quite plausible. ^_^
Then, this introduces a new factor, which is dilution of effort; presumably lowering the average quality of each fork (even ''before'' we consider whether they can be recombined). I don't think that I agree with this, since more derivative works may be spread more widely, causing more people to work on improvement in the first place. This is particularly likely in the WikiNews example, since any hesitation on the part of news organisations to redistribute GNU FDL or CC-by-sa stories translates directly into a less widespread audience. I expect that the greatest positive feedback from WikiNews will come not from how news redistributors edit our dispatches but from readers flocking back to WikiNews through an attribution link. After all, once the newspaper prints it, it's no longer news. ^_^
Under possibility A update energy is concentrated on a smaller number of forks and when there are forks any modifications made to them can be used by all the others. This reduces duplicated effort and gives more time to create more content (mirrors will and abridged versions will also propogate all over the place).
OK, this is a very important point. Again, I don't believe that this would apply to WikiNews; I doubt that WikiNews could develop from reiincorporating forks, since the lifetime of a news article would be so short. Instead, WikiNews would benefit from wide distribution by attracting new editors. Forks would still be a bad thing, but any fork of WikiNews would fork only the editing community, not very much of the content. A fork could be brought back in, with only a few days' delay to wait for the old articles to become obsolete.
In fact, this reminds me of what you wrote earlier in your post, which I skipped earlier in this reply:
When content goes into the public domain anybody can do whatever they want with it. This is especially fine by me for reference works since by the time its copyright expires it is already old and probably way out of date. I see nothing wrong with that. I just want to make sure that before that happens the reference content Wikimedia creates is protected by copyleft. Eventually all Wikimedia content will also enter the public domain, but so long as derivative works are being made, then the most recent and useful versions of that content will be copyleft.
In the case of Wikipedia, there are several forks (all defunct, I believe, except for EL) whose content remains up to date, and our copyleft licence insures that none of these will have to remain forked permanently for copyright reasons. However, after 95 years (or even the 14 years of the first US statute), a new fork of the (by then PD) 2004 material in 2099 (or even 2018) would be hopelessly out of date and thus nothing to worry about.
With Wikinews, however, this deadline would arrive even faster. As 95 years is an insanely long time to protect an encyclopaedia article, so even 14 years would be an insanely long time to protect a news story. One day might be enough, and one week would surely suffice; so this makes it less significant if the protection dwindles to zero. Any proprietary fork would have only a week's worth of useful material.
Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
- Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).
If I indicated that (which I'm pretty sure I did not), then I was mistaken.
Don't worry, I didn't think that you had indicated this. This premise would fill the logical gap in the bullet-point argument, so I mentioned it in order to clarify the nature of that gap. I'm glad that you don't actually believe this, because neither do I! ^_^
But now you've given more detailed reasoning in another direction, so if you agree that the bullet-point argument in insufficient by itself, then we can set the above mistaken premise aside.
----
So let me summarise the ideas at hand.
First of all, free noncopyleft documents (like CC-by and PD documents) will be more widely distributed and will generate more derivative works. On the one hand, this will generate more public interest in the project (especially if there is attribution, as a CC-by licence would enforce), causing more people to get involved in it. But on the other hand, these derivative works may fork the project, and such a fork might get saddled with a nonfree licence, making the fork permanent.
Thus the danger of copyleft is that people may redistribute fewer documents, depressing the growth in Wikimedia popularity and new editors, not to mention the value that seeing the documents brings to the public. But at the same time, the value of copyleft is that any forks can definitely be brought back to the original project if wanted, and if nothing else, they will necessarily remain free for future users.
So there is a tension between wanting wide distribution to a point, so that many people get to use the work, some of whom will contribute, and wanting to keep things close enough to home to prevent forking and the saddling of our free content with proprietary crap. This is reflected in the tension over the pragmatic case for copyleft.
Now, assuming that I understand your position correctly, you believe that the tension should always resolve in the same way. It's always better that the material stay cohesive, with contributors working under a single free licence right here on Wikimedia.
That's certainly a reasonable pragmatic position for Wikipedia; there is little point in having encyclopaedia articles mirrored, since people only look in an encyclopaedia on special occasions. When they want to search for information, they'll use Google and we're much better off if they hit Wikipedia consistently. (Here I'm ignoring the people without access to the Internet who will eventually look stuff up in printed excerpts from Wikipedia, because that situation isn't conducive to forking in the first place.)
But the situation with WikiNews will probably be very different. First of all, many people consistently look for news every day, and they often want to get their news from a local source (like a newspaper or radio wave broadcast) that covers local events. So WikiNews will be useful to them only if local media picks it up. But also, if it gets redistributed ''too'' far away, to the point that a new project with forked content appears, then even if this fork uses proprietary copyright content, those copyrights won't prevent combining the forked project with WikiNews, should its editors agree -- only the archives would have to remain separate.
Would WikiNews be so different from Wikipedia that the tension should be resolved in a different way? Since WikiNews is now only an idea, not yet begun even in the sense of developing policies and a userbase, I don't think that any of us is in much of a position to judge. It should be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that, whatever may come up in the future (like WikiNews), our goal shall be to develop content for free use by others. But it should not be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that copyleft shall always be the best way to realise that goal. We may yet find ourselves in a situation where it isn't.
In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence. But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections, then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.
By-laws can be changed by a simple majority of the trustees. If in the future we find that a particular project, such as Wikinews, isn't doing so well and we suspect it is the fact that it is using a copyleft license, then a change can be made to make an exception.
This is why getting the right policy now is not absolutely necessary. Still, I believe that getting the right policy now is a good idea. Otherwise, we'll just have to go through this whole discussion again at the trustees' meeting. ^_^
Perhaps the discussion will be easier to do in that future potientiality, when there will be more concrete issues at hand. Maybe we should just retain the ambiguous wording that Anthère first asked about???
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
... Keep in mind, you're the one that's proposing a stricter policy. So it's no surprise that I'm asking you to justify assumptions that go into making that policy!
I'm proposing we stay with what we have had all along: Copyleft. Others want to do something different. So from my perspective, it is they who need to justify why they want to do something different.
.... So, let me see if I have this straight. First, you're saying that there will be more derivative works with (B) than with (A). I have to agree that I find this quite plausible. ^_^
Then, this introduces a new factor, which is dilution of effort; presumably lowering the average quality of each fork (even ''before'' we consider whether they can be recombined). I don't think that I agree with this, since more derivative works may be spread more widely, causing more people to work on improvement in the first place.
Wikipedia is directly available all around the world already. Thus there is little need to have derivative works all over the place being worked on separately. Wikipedia content is also mirrored by many different websites. Thus extending our reach. The few forks we have are also directly compatible with Wikipedia. Thus any improvements they make can be reincorporated back into Wikipedia. We are also not dealing with fiction here: we are writting reference material. Thus any improvement that is made in one derivative work will likely also have to be made in every other fork. That is needless duplication of effort.
This is particularly likely in the WikiNews example, since any hesitation on the part of news organisations to redistribute GNU FDL or CC-by-sa stories translates directly into a less widespread audience.
The CC-by-sa is already well-suited for WikiNews. We just need to inform newspapers exactly what they can do with WikiNews content - just as the Associated Press already informs newspapers what they can do with AP content. Dual-licensing with the GFDL will make it possible to use WikiNews content in any other Wikimedia project. Hopefully the compatibility issue will be fixed soon.
... With Wikinews, however, this deadline would arrive even faster. As 95 years is an insanely long time to protect an encyclopaedia article, so even 14 years would be an insanely long time to protect a news story. One day might be enough, and one week would surely suffice; so this makes it less significant if the protection dwindles to zero. Any proprietary fork would have only a week's worth of useful material.
How would that work if content is under the CC-by? The AP could get Wikinews content as soon as it is published and add improvements, thus making a proprietary derivative work right away. Then only the AP could grant distribution rights to the superior version.
So instead of taming the monster, we would be feeding it.
... But now you've given more detailed reasoning in another direction, so if you agree that the bullet-point argument in insufficient by itself, then we can set the above mistaken premise aside.
Agreed.
.... That's certainly a reasonable pragmatic position for Wikipedia; there is little point in having encyclopaedia articles mirrored, since people only look in an encyclopaedia on special occasions.
Mirrors are fine since they reduce load on our servers and expose our content to people who might not have read it otherwise. Forks are problematic.
... But the situation with WikiNews will probably be very different. First of all, many people consistently look for news every day,
And hopefully in time many will go to Wikinews as a source for unbiased and factual news.
... It should be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that, whatever may come up in the future (like WikiNews), our goal shall be to develop content for free use by others.
Not when that freedom is the freedom to restrict use of derivative works.
But it should not be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that copyleft shall always be the best way to realise that goal. We may yet find ourselves in a situation where it isn't.
I still hold that copyleft should always be our default position. If and when copyleft has proved to be an unreasonable hindrance to a particular project that is preventing it from becoming viable, then we can re-consider other options.
Maybe we should just retain the ambiguous wording that Anth�re first asked about???
For the time being that is fine by me since my interpretation of the wording includes copyleft.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Keep in mind, you're the one that's proposing a stricter policy. So it's no surprise that I'm asking you to justify assumptions that go into making that policy!
I'm proposing we stay with what we have had all along: Copyleft. Others want to do something different. So from my perspective, it is they who need to justify why they want to do something different.
''Does'' anybody want to do anything different?
When Wikibooks was first begun, Karl Wick wanted to write an OChem book that used a noncopyleft licence (if I'm remembering things correctly). But now, I don't know anybody that's suggesting noncopyleft for WikiNews, only people that are considering whether the possibility is a good one. I may be ignorant of a discussion somewhere else, of course; but in any case, I agree with you that they need to make their case.
And even if we adopted the not-necessarily-copyleft text that Erik suggested, then they would still have to make their case.
Then, this introduces a new factor, which is dilution of effort; presumably lowering the average quality of each fork (even ''before'' we consider whether they can be recombined). I don't think that I agree with this, since more derivative works may be spread more widely, causing more people to work on improvement in the first place.
Wikipedia is directly available all around the world already. Thus there is little need to have derivative works all over the place being worked on separately. Wikipedia content is also mirrored by many different websites. Thus extending our reach. The few forks we have are also directly compatible with Wikipedia. Thus any improvements they make can be reincorporated back into Wikipedia. We are also not dealing with fiction here: we are writting reference material. Thus any improvement that is made in one derivative work will likely also have to be made in every other fork. That is needless duplication of effort.
I'm not disagreeing with the duplication/dilution of effort. The question is whether the average fork (or even the original) has lower quality. In Wikipedia's case, this is probably true; I don't believe that [[w:es:]] is better because of EL, for example. It's not so clear to me for WikiNews, for the reasons that I gave last time.
This is particularly likely in the WikiNews example, since any hesitation on the part of news organisations to redistribute GNU FDL or CC-by-sa stories translates directly into a less widespread audience.
The CC-by-sa is already well-suited for WikiNews. We just need to inform newspapers exactly what they can do with WikiNews content - just as the Associated Press already informs newspapers what they can do with AP content.
Of course, we do need to inform them, but we also need to sell to them. Many local news organisations will begin prejudiced against our material, and it won't help if we require stricter conditions on them than the AP does. To be sure, in a sense we require much more lenient conditions; they can't let others copy the AP material, but our stuff is OK. However, people that are used to to the Closed framework are more comfortable with the AP's method, evil as it is.
This is not to say that we shouldn't try to make people understand the free paradigm. I'm just pointing out the material fact that free content will be strange to many prejudiced people. Thus in convincing them that WikiNews is a good idea after all, it may well turn out that CC-by works where CC-by-sa does not. OTOH, it may well turn out that CC-by-sa works where CC-by does not. I would suggest some surveys before deciding what to use with WikiNews.
Dual-licensing with the GFDL will make it possible to use WikiNews content in any other Wikimedia project. Hopefully the compatibility issue will be fixed soon.
If the incompatibility (in that direction) with CC-by-sa is fixed, then any incompatibility with CC-by will also be fixed; I don't see why you brought this up.
With Wikinews, however, this deadline would arrive even faster. As 95 years is an insanely long time to protect an encyclopaedia article, so even 14 years would be an insanely long time to protect a news story. One day might be enough, and one week would surely suffice; so this makes it less significant if the protection dwindles to zero. Any proprietary fork would have only a week's worth of useful material.
How would that work if content is under the CC-by? The AP could get Wikinews content as soon as it is published and add improvements, thus making a proprietary derivative work right away. Then only the AP could grant distribution rights to the superior version.
That's a good point, although the AP is likely to be even more prejudiced against our material. That said, after a few years, then they would catch on. So you're right, this will be the same problem as we have today when Microsoft incorporates BSD code into Windows.
Thus, anybody proposing CC-by for WikiNews now has a harder case to make. ^_^
But the situation with WikiNews will probably be very different. First of all, many people consistently look for news every day,
And hopefully in time many will go to Wikinews as a source for unbiased and factual news.
And hopefully many won't. If my local newspaper picks up WikiNews -- and I hope that they do! -- then I'll never go to WikiNews as a reader. Since I don't intend to be a regular editor on WikiNews, I'll rarely go. So it is important that local organisations pick up WikiNews -- and I believe that you agree. ^_^
It should be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that, whatever may come up in the future (like WikiNews), our goal shall be to develop content for free use by others.
Not when that freedom is the freedom to restrict use of derivative works.
Freedom to restrict use of deriviative works is not, IMO, any sort of freedom of use of the original Wikimedia work. And it doesn't count as "freedom" in the standard (FSF) meaning, so nobody will be able to argue that the previous sentence defends such a freedom.
But it should not be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy that copyleft shall always be the best way to realise that goal. We may yet find ourselves in a situation where it isn't.
I still hold that copyleft should always be our default position. If and when copyleft has proved to be an unreasonable hindrance to a particular project that is preventing it from becoming viable, then we can re-consider other options.
Maybe we should just retain the ambiguous wording that Anthère first asked about???
For the time being that is fine by me since my interpretation of the wording includes copyleft.
And mine does not. (That is, whether or not copyleft is a good idea, the wording that Anthère quoted clearly does not require copyleft, IMO.) So the discussion will arise again, hopefully with more direct relevance.
Thus, I guess that we can stop here, and give Anthère an answer: # No, the GNU FDL itself won't necessary have to be used. # Yes, whaterver licence is used must be free in the FSF sense. # Who knows, copyleft licences may be required and may not; it depends on who you ask.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
If the incompatibility (in that direction) with CC-by-sa is fixed, then any incompatibility with CC-by will also be fixed; I don't see why you brought this up.
So that any modifications made to a CC-by-sa Wikinews article (or a FDL version) could all be re-incorporated back into Wikinews. Under the dual license scheme content could flow from Wikinews to any Wikimedia project via the FDL and from Wikinews to newspapers via the CC-by-sa, but not in the reverse direction. If the CC-by-sa and FDL were compatible, then that could happen and we could make things simple by publishing all Wikimedia content under the CC-by-sa.
How would that work if content is under the CC-by? The AP could get Wikinews content as soon as it is published and add improvements, thus making a proprietary derivative work right away. Then only the AP could grant distribution rights to the superior version.
That's a good point, although the AP is likely to be even more prejudiced against our material. That said, after a few years, then they would catch on. So you're right, this will be the same problem as we have today when Microsoft incorporates BSD code into Windows.
Thus, anybody proposing CC-by for WikiNews now has a harder case to make. ^_^
Good example, although I wasn't aware of that MS factoid.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote in part:
Toby Bartels wrote:
So you're right, this will be the same problem as we have today when Microsoft incorporates BSD code into Windows.
Good example, although I wasn't aware of that MS factoid.
I read it on the FSF web site, I believe.
I don't know how up to date it is, or how significant it is; the FSF is hardly an NPOV source on this sort of thing. But it's interesting to think about, all the same. ^_^
-- Toby
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