The Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License was the most supported license in the recent poll at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll.
Many of the options had very few voters. Of the options with more than 12 voters, the GFDL had only 21% support, and the Wikinews License 0.2 had 60% support (or 64% from Wikinewsies). Fewer people voted on the Wikinews License option than on the Creative Commons one, meaning 31 people in total supported CC-BY, compared to just 17 supporting WNL 2.0.
With over 87% support from Wikinewsies in the poll, and 82% support overall, CC-BY has now been agreed upon by the Wikimedia Foundation to be the new license for all existing and future versions of Wikinews. Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
The license can be read at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ (that page links to other language versions of the license, and the full legal code).
Brion has changed the site settings, so the meta data of the wikis should state they are now CC-BY. However, manually created pages such as http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Copyright will need to be updated. MediaWiki namespace pages may need changing if they had been edited previously. Pages that might need changing include: [[MediaWiki:Copyright]], [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]], [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning2]], [[MediaWiki:Copyrightpage]], [[Project:Copyrights]].
I would appreciate it if you could translate this message into the language of your Wikinews so that all members of the community are aware of the change.
Angela
-- Angela Beesley Wikimedia Foundation
Hooray ;-) Thank you for your notice on our [[ja:n:WN:RL|Izakaya]], Angela
I would like you to make it sure on one issue; that is
On 9/25/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
The Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License was the most supported license in the recent poll at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll.
With over 87% support from Wikinewsies in the poll, and 82% support overall, CC-BY has now been agreed upon by the Wikimedia Foundation to be the new license for all existing and future versions of Wikinews. Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
you meant in fact "remain public domain or the other licence which each project had chosen", I suppose. Or not. It is our serious concern because Japanese Wikinews had chosen Cc-By-2.1-Jp, so somehow the switch would go smoothly there, but because of difference of jurisdiction and available version (2.1-JP is the latest version currently; 2.5-JP availability is uncertain - or not; I don't know who knows it... eh, hum).
One technical question: can "CC-By-2.1-(a certain country) or later" switch to merely "CC-By-2.5" or "CC-By-2.5-(another certain country)?
And of course, three language versions of Wikinews had chosen GFDL. They would like to make a similar question.
-- Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
On 9/25/05, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
you meant in fact "remain public domain or the other licence which each project had chosen", I suppose.
Yes, that is what I meant. Edits remain whatever they originally were (often PD, but I realise this wasn't the case for some wikis). If any text was licensed under something not compatible with CC-BY, it might be best to protect those pages and note on them that they were licensed under <whatever>.
One technical question: can "CC-By-2.1-(a certain country) or later" switch to merely "CC-By-2.5" or "CC-By-2.5-(another certain country)?
I don't know enough about the iCommons licenses to know whether that switch is permitted.
Angela
Quick question - does that mean Wikinews is going out of Beta now?
-- Regards, Datrio
On 9/25/05, Dariusz Siedlecki datrio@gmail.com wrote:
Quick question - does that mean Wikinews is going out of Beta now?
No, it doesn't. I'd say it's certainly a step towards moving out of beta, but not the only condition.
It's probably more useful to think about specific language versions going out of beta rather than Wikinews as whole doing so, since some will reach that stage much sooner than others. Erik proposed some criteria earlier this year, which suggested that before moving out of beta, a Wikinews site should have a large number of new stories every day, RSS feeds, regular original reporting and associated policies, solid fact-checking, review and an archival process. See http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2005-March/000079.html and related mails in that thread.
Angela.
On 25/09/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/25/05, Dariusz Siedlecki datrio@gmail.com wrote:
Quick question - does that mean Wikinews is going out of Beta now?
No, it doesn't. I'd say it's certainly a step towards moving out of beta, but not the only condition.
Erik proposed some criteria earlier this year, which suggested that before moving out of beta, a Wikinews site should have a large number of new stories every day, RSS feeds, regular original reporting and associated policies, solid fact-checking, review and an archival process. See http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2005-March/000079.html and related mails in that thread.
En has all of the above now.
Dan
Well I guess it will be my turn to "try" to explain the meaning and the legal issues of the CC licenses.
But, this legal uncertainty will stay for long (there are several other issues), it is the reason why I strongly recommended the WNL License for precision and legal safety, as well as dual-licensing for good and simple compatibility with other projects.
I hope the legal policy will continue evolving between WN emerges from beta to its final stage.
Angela wrote:
Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
you meant in fact "remain public domain or the other licence which each project had chosen", I suppose.
Yes, that is what I meant. Edits remain whatever they originally were (often PD, but I realise this wasn't the case for some wikis). If any text was licensed under something not compatible with CC-BY, it might be best to protect those pages and note on them that they were licensed under <whatever>.
One technical question: can "CC-By-2.1-(a certain country) or later" switch to merely "CC-By-2.5" or "CC-By-2.5-(another certain country)?
I don't know enough about the iCommons licenses to know whether that switch is permitted.
Being the translator of the CC licenses for France and an IP license specialist, I can say that there is no clear answer for this question. It mainly depend from national legislations, but it also depends from the practical process that it will follow.
Still, I doubt it would be valid if it's only done through an annoucement on the WN website. One way or another, it would necessarily need the authors of WN to express their agreement for this change.
Jean-Baptiste Soufron CERSA-CNRS PARIS 2
Is it possible for Wikinews to be dual-licensed with both CC-BY 2.5 and WNL? If it is, it should be.
I think a lot of people voted for BY 2.5 because they recognize the CC "brand" without understanding the full legal implications of the license, while at the same time not believing that an effective license could be as short and simple as our home-grown WNL.
Dan
Is it possible for Wikinews to be dual-licensed with both CC-BY 2.5 and WNL? If it is, it should be.
Of course it would be possible, and I would say that it would be one of the best solution. Maybe even WNL+CCBY2.5+GFDL
I think a lot of people voted for BY 2.5 because they recognize the CC "brand" without understanding the full legal implications of the license, while at the same time not believing that an effective license could be as short and simple as our home-grown WNL.
Exactly.
And that's why I hope the license policy of wn will evolve.
Jean-Baptiste Soufron, CERSA-CNRS PARIS 2
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