<snip> I do not know a great deal about the variety of licenses. What do you mean by a less Free license? What does this mean in practice? Birgitte SB

Hello Gerard, Hmm, this is pretty adventurous, isn't it? GPL is not compatible with GFDL and a poll to change a license of current content is only valid if the license is entitled to the community as a collaborative work and not to contributors like in the case of Wikimedia projects. Otherwise, you should be only able to get edits made 100% by people who agreed (but I guess, you know all that already). Also, in some countries (France for example), there is a "database-specific copyright law" that may apply on dictionaries (a structured list of synonyms, translations and all being nothing more than a database for the law) and which basically forbids to copy a "substantial amount" -both in term of data fields and entries- of a database (if you read some French: http://www.murielle-cahen.com/p_base_de_donnees.asp). Thanks, Jerome Banal 2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: > Hoi, > Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two > licenses that are not compatible otherwise. > > It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to > copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of > facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best > there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a > practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about > definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about > this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of > defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having bogus > information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of > their collection was illegally copied. > > For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an > application for our data that we did not think about, that is success". > The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in > applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD > export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised > language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are > few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing > ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not > provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the ISO-639-6. > > When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright, > the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the license. > What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ > for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete > curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible > to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell > checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user > knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the > functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution provides. > > When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ, there > are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links > on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use the > WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to > /integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on this. > >From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the > active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required to > investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into > WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses > like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The > copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to > grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary > projects. > > When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used under > a less Free license, you only need to attribute. > > Thanks, > GerardM > > > Jerome Banal wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving >> > /new/ > >> edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to >> > dual > >> licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about >> > whether > >> we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk >> > with > >> you all. >> >> So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be >> useful. >> >> The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better >> cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as >> specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under >> > GFDL > >> license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and >> > CC-by > >> at the same time. Which is not our case. >> >> Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would >> > make > >> them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help us >> making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part, >> > data > >> part...). >> >> >> What would be the consequences about this license modification ? >> >> * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of >> > change > >> would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users), >> > new > >> edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still reuse >> > the > >> whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus. >> >> * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ), Wiktionary >> content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any >> compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give >> attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original >> remains free so it should not be a big deal). >> >> * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be >> > possible > >> without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not >> insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality. >> >> * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to >> request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is >> > more > >> free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less restrictions, >> including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be more >> difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the >> enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a >> > different > >> license choice. >> >> >> So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ) >> > and > >> bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources >> > -like > >> some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles in >> > the > >> past and of derivative works). >> >> OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should >> Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that >> > just > >> sound bad to you? >> >> Thanks all, >> Jerome Banal

Salut, Thanks for this detailed explanation Gerard. So if I sum up the whole thing, actually, you can already grab a lot of contents for wikt:fr, but changing the license would made grabbing definitions somewhat safer, am I right? Right now, reactions here seem pretty positive to try a license change and I did not see someone from the board screaming at this idea :-) Nobody is against starting a discussion/poll about this? A local one or a Meta one? Thanks for any comment, Jerome 2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: collection. Wikimedia in French: success". in not copyright, WiktionaryZ possible spell links to the licenses The to talk be better under and would help part, users), any give original not to WiktionaryZ) articles that _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l