--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 8:07 PM 2009/3/20 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any
baring on what
people have agreed to have done with their work simply
doesn't hold
water.
Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back credit aren't irreconcilable after all. Now we're apparently moving on to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use. But even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't support rigorous author attribution:
<snip>
Unfortunately I haven't been able to follow all this closely so forgive me if I am bringing up something already settled.
My biggest problem: I can understand why using the site TOS in this way is seen as a desirable way to go. After all it would not require any of the technical work that producing a list of significant authors would. But I think it does have big drawback. It would hamper the importation of similarly licensed material written under dissimilar conditions of use into Wikimedia projects by non-authors. Having this ability was one of the highlights that made the pain of the license transition process worthwhile for me. And if we do succeed in seeing free content gain in mainstream usage, this will be and even bigger problem in the future and lead to confusion over the CC brand. Labeling ourselves CC-by-SA but not being able accept much of the material that is published under CC-by-SA unless it is directly contributed by the original author(s) is a problem in my eyes.
Another annoyance: There really isn't anything being said on how this will apply to projects like Commons and Wikisource that already have a large variety of works under different licenses. How exactly will the TOS be changed on those projects? We need to develop the tech side of having some sort of meta license/attribution information available for those projects anyway. Already the poster and book printing extensions cannot be legally used every work within those projects without such development work. So choosing an uncommon attribution model for the license will not save us that development cost forever.
Possible compromise solution: This requires an editable tab called Attribution. We pick a date for license migration and on that date these tabs are generated containing only a permalink to the history of the article at that date. From this time on when editing Wikipedia there is a new field below the edit summary asking editors to check a box if they have made a copyrightable edit and to enter the way they would like to be attributed into the field (or also the way the externally written CC-by-SA material requires attribution). Also there is the possibility of setting up an attribution name in preferences where you simply check a box that the edit is copyrightable and name is auto-filled. When saving this information is added to the Attribution tab automatically. Admins can edit the Attribution tab manually to add people from the old history who request it, fix mistakes entered in the field, or remove someone spamming the field with obviously non-copyrighted changes, etc. We recommend to reusers that they attribute the material with text that auto-generates from the info in the Attribution tab and includes a permalink to the current version of the article. In the terms of use we specify that if you do not opt-in for a specific attribution by checking the box we are requiring you accept CC-by-SA with attribution by url as Erik describes. We continue to hold the position that a link alone is and has always been reasonable attribution as Erik's arguments describe. But from the license migration forward, we are offering greater flexibility in attribution options in order to be to be more compatible with free content developed externally.
Birgitte SB
Introducing the terms of service, or anything other than the license itself, confuses it for me too. The questions it brings to my mind are:
1) Which controls attribution, the license or the TOS? 2) For importation, which determines compatibility - the license or the TOS of the original site (if applicable)? 3) (A restatement of 1) If the license and the TOS conflict, which controls? 4) If the intended form of attribution is seen as being allowed via the TOS, does the TOS then constitute the actual license (as opposed to GFDL 1.2)?
A lot of this is deeply technical. I'm not clear on who is right, but wrt to writing and debating skill alone the pro-transition folks are clearly at an advantage. What I'd like to see is calmly argued and defined opposition; without recourse to "You're an idiot, and I know phrase X means Y because I said so." When Erik, Mike Godwin and Michael Snow make concise and well written arguments, and get replies in the form of short inline comments along the lines of "No, you're wrong" it doesn't help anyone get a good picture of what the problems here are supposed to be.
Nathan
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org