On 29 May 2004 at 14:09, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

It's a pity that we can't change the Wikipedia licence any more. We would need something that would allow to copy more freely within the wikis, something which is more suitable for collaborative writing. However if the content is to be taken "outside", authors should be named as indicated by the version history.

Uli

One partial solution is to have contributors grant a license to license under the GFDL. We have a modest proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Submission_Standards ...

First, "by contributing to Wikipedia you grant Wikipedia users a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to edit your text on Wikipedia. You agree that your submission may be changed, modified, edited, moved, extended, deleted or combined by subsequent users of Wikipedia."

Second, "by contributing to Wikipedia, you grant the Wikimedia Foundation a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, right and license to publish your submission, before or after being modified as described above, under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)."

That doesn't permit free copying of text between wikipedia and its sister projects, but I expect addresses some concerns. It's basically how we treat submissions already - a formalisation of "edited mercilessly and redistributed at will".

-Martin

--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette jean-christophe.chazalette@laposte.net wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthere" anthere9@yahoo.com To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:05 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

...

I guess this is my last attempt to talk about copyright issues in this place before deciding

that

...

• copyright discussions are obviously not

interesting

...

*anyone* here, so are not worth trying to be

discussed

...

since it raises absolutely no interest whatsoever

• or that are not to be discussed in any other

place

...

than on the english wikipedia list (see Tomos discussion about changing our copyright license, discussion that is occuring in another place, with

the

...

idea that all wikipedias would follow the english rules afterwards)

So, I'll ask just another time to be certain.

I must say that I am currently very disappointed

by

...

lack of cooperation on the matter, because I do

not

...

think my question is very difficult for those

working

...

in the wikimedia projects other than wikipedia.

We are setting the foundation status. The current status are indicating that ALL OF OUR CONTENTS (wikimedia projects) will be distributed under the gfdl license.

It doesn't say that, ant :

"WF have contents which are not protected by the provisions regulating the the intellectual property, if such is the case freely distributed under the conditions of a free licence of documentation of the type of the Free Documentation License written by Free Software Foundation Inc, and in particular its European branch with http://www.fsfeurope.org/"

No classical copyright, and a possibility of *a* free licence *of the type* of GFDL. So that I can't see how it would be possibly wider. Did we read the same text ? :-)

villy

We read the same text but do not understand it the same way. Does this allow contents under public domain, does it allow contents over other types of free licenses, does it allow contents under fair use and so on ?

In short, does it limit our future abilities to distribute content depending on future choices ?

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Daniel-

Would it not be much more important to make sure that Wikinews text can be used to *update* the corresponding Wikipedia articles? I've been very skeptical of the Wikinews idea due to the fact that it may reduce the rate at which Wikipedia is kept up to date.

Wikinews would have two primary goals: * summarizing news * original reporting

Wikipedia does none of the latter, so the only potential for redundancy is with news summarizing, currently done on Wikipedia on the [[current events]] page. This page provides one paragraph summaries with links to external news sources. In the future, instead of linking to external sources, these one paragraph summaries could link to detailed Wikinews articles instead, which would include Wikinews original reporting as well as a complete analysis of all sources.

I see no reason why Wikinews in one capacity or another should reduce the rate of updates on Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, I believe it will increase it, as a large number of additional links to current topics will point from Wikinews to Wikipedia.

But placing Wikinews text under a license that is incompatible with Wikipedia is way over the top.

You appear to be under the misconception that a license different from the FDL would automatically mean license incompatibility. While this is, to some extent, true in the direction ''FDL text'' => ''text in another license'' (because the FDL requires that all derivative works are FDL- licensed), it is not necessarily true in the direction ''text in another license'' => ''FDL text''.

Said other license can set a minimum set of restrictions and allow an optional specific set of additional restrictions to be imposed for the purpose of license compatibility. Dual-licensing, e.g. CC-SA/FDL, would have the same effect.

This specifically addresses your concern of using Wikinews content to update Wikipedia articles. Given that Wikinews is not intended to be an encyclopedia, I think that background information from Wikipedia is best provided using links, which is not a problem.

But I agree with you absolutely that we should carefully consider such a deviation from our standard license, even in the form of dual licensing. I just do not think that local Wikimedia chapters, or the mother organization, should set the FDL into stone as the only license we want to use for our projects. Wikinews is just one example where I think that we need to look at the alternatives before making a decision.

...

But the FDL with its long license text and complicated terms is not very practical for that.

Then let's work on reducing the FDL down to its essentials, call that the FCL, have the FSF adopt it and create a FDL 2.0 that allows direct compatibility with invariant-section-free FDL content and the FCL (the FCL would in turn be compatible with the CC by-sa).

I think you overestimate the flexibility of the Free Software Foundation :-). Of course the "any higher version number" clause of the FDL allows us to make some improvements in future versions of the license, but these improvements depend entirely on how much the FSF is willing to accommodate our position. Given that the FSF has a significant number of documents licensed under the FDL which would be affected by such a change, the resistance to drastic changes - which are needed to address the problems of the FDL - will be strong. Keep in mind that the FDL was originally designed for print documents, and that existing print documents by the FSF, if they do not refer to a specific version number of the FDL, will also be affected by any changes.

Nevertheless, this is of course a road which we shall travel. Its mere existence should, however, not preclude us from contemplating the exploration of other paths.

...

There is even the question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be more practical in this instance.

Then that project would not be free content.

By the definition of the Free Software Foundation, that is correct. However, that definition is not the only one. In fact, most people have an entirely different understanding of "free content."

Public domain and non-share-alike attribution licenses encourage mutually incompatible content forks where improvements that create derivative works cannot be re-incorporated back into the original - meaning there is no positive feeback loop.

Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution- only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?" The possibility that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

Make no mistake - the originally free content will always remain free in both instances.

Regards,

Erik

Daniel-

It also happens in actual articles. [[Nick Berg]] and [[Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse reports]] for example. But I do see a distinction: Articles on Wikipedia would synthesize the whole topic while Wikinews articles would just cover the breaking news on that topic. However I'm skeptical that the average user will grep this distinction, resulting in a content fork for recent history.

News articles provide as much information as possible on a single event, even a single event in a larger story such as the Abu Ghraib scandal. There would be no Wikinews article called [[Abu Ghraib scandal]]. There would be a Wikinews article called [[Abu Ghraib contractor faces new inquiry - May 28, 2004]]. After its release, there would be a fixed time limit within which we can publish updates to a Wikinews article. Once that time has passed, any new developments would have to be covered in a new article, just like in regular news media.

Such articles are intended for someone who is familiar with the big picture of a situation, but wants to know the most recent development in as much detail as possible. The half-life of an individual article would be rather low; after a couple of weeks, it would turn into a source document, referenced by other Wikinews articles ("Recent stories on this topic:") and by Wikipedia.

Such developments, in Wikipedia, would often be summarized down to one paragraph or even one sentence ("Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was killed by unknown assailants on May 30, 2004 [1]"), where the Wikinews article would contain as much detail as possible, quotes from all relevant parties (which we can freely copy from outside sources), speculation about the future impact etc.

Furthermore, I anticipate that original reporting will begin as soon as the Wikinews project is launched, and that is something which Wikipedia can never do.

Wikipedia's ability to be up-to-date is one of the most cited good things about us and we should be "very" careful not to jeopardize that.

I see no such jeopardy. Wikinews and Wikipedia are highly complementary. Where they do similar things - synthesize information from outside sources - they do it with a different level of detail and with a different goal. Wikipedia will benefit greatly from Wikinews just like Wikipedia benefits from [[current events]] - additional links to non-existent or short articles will lead to additional detail being added. The articles themselves are very different in nature, style and scope.

If and when we get a problem with people giving first hand reports, then we can seriously think about starting Wikinews, IMO.

That would be a fatal mistake, based on the assumption that people will do stupid things which are clearly not allowed and not wanted on an encyclopedia. We should not just start projects to deal with problems on Wikipedia, we should also start them when there is a clear, separate goal which is within the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.

An "If and when we get a problem" mentality for starting new projects is very, very dangerous. Please think about whether that is really the position you want to adopt.

I'm sure that will happen someday, but I don't think that will be a problem until Wikipedia.org is in the top 100 or so list of websites on the Internet.

That may well be the case, if you set the limit "We will start Wikinews when people start reporting original news on Wikipedia". That would, however, be a very silly thing to do. In fact, if that is the limit we set for starting Wikinews, it may very well never come to pass, because any attempts at original reporting on Wikipedia will be stopped so quickly that no significant trend to do so can ever develop.

The question we should ask is of course not "When will people start original reporting on Wikipedia?" but "Can we find enough people already to do useful original reporting on Wikinews?". I believe we can. Take a look at Indymedia, which, like Wikipedia, is an international project. It has a far higher traffic ranking than Wikipedia - about 4000 - yet it manages to be present at major world events.

Indymedia has an extremely leftist bent and this is reflected by its choice of topics (protests, scandals, conspiracy theories etc.), but other than that, it is a good example that grass-roots reporting can work. This would be our primary competitor when working on Wikinews, not Wikipedia. And unlike Indymedia, Wikinews would have a Top-500 website that can infect it with volunteers to do the reporting, and a constant flow of free images and content that can be used to do so. The summarizing of outside sources would be primarily a service to cover the things which we do not cover ourselves.

We should by then have dozens of Wikimedians in each large city of the world and thus have a large potential pool of journalists on the ground.

You don't need a large pool of journalists to be useful, a small but growing pool is already good enough. If in our first weeks our original reporting only covers Linux conferences, kernel releases and baseball events, that doesn't matter. That's how Wikipedia started out - we didn't wait until we had people from all fields of knowledge.

...

You appear to be under the misconception that a license different from the FDL would automatically mean license incompatibility. While this is, to some extent, true in the direction ''FDL text'' => ''text in another license'' (because the FDL requires that all derivative works are FDL- licensed), it is not necessarily true in the direction ''text in another license'' => ''FDL text''.

Free content is not free when it cannot be freely copied back and forth between the source and the derivative work.

It's not that simple. When dealing with licenses, you're dealing with a mix of freedoms which can be balanced and juggled to reach various goals.

...

This specifically addresses your concern of using Wikinews content to update Wikipedia articles. Given that Wikinews is not intended to be an encyclopedia, I think that background information from Wikipedia is best provided using links, which is not a problem.

This would be different from a great many news articles I read - the good ones always include background information.

That's because in a New York Times article, you have no other choice - you can't just say "Oh, and if you want to know more about who that cleric is, check out Wikipedia" because people can't easily get to Wikipedia from the printed newspaper. Wikinews would include background information, but it would be typically a summary of Wikipedia - "Nizamuddin Shamzai was a pro- Taliban cleric who had called for a holy war against the United States; see the Wikipedia article for details." Thus it would be somewhere between "no background information" and "the level of background information of a good printed newspaper article."

Interestingly enough, online news outlets increasingly include links to Wikipedia.

That is why I am proposing the creation of a GNU Free Content License that invariant-free GNU FDL text can be migrated to. Then the only change in the GNU FDL 2.0 that would need to be made is a clause stating that:

"Any document licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 2.0 or any later version that does not contain Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover Texts, can be licensed under the GNU Free Content License version 1.0 or any later version."

That's all nice and good, but it doesn't address the main problem - all existing documents which meet these conditions would be affected. How many of these documents are there? I have no idea. Do you? Unfortunately, there is no central registry of FDL texts. I believe that the FSF will only agree to such a change if we can demonstrate that no harm to existing materials will result.

...

Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution- only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?" The possibility that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

The point is to expose as many people as possible to the content, yes. But that can only be done by having it under a free content license. If we release into the public domain, then work on the content gets forked and improvements made to the forks can not be back-ported to the original.

That is a prediction which is not necessarily true. Even if it is true, you appear to assume that the work in question would have been done at all under a copyleft license. That is doubtful, particularly for Wikinews. The typical usage example for a Wikinews article would be a daily newspaper which wants to have an alternative to the Reuters feed. These people would likely be turned away by the FDL (although not necessarily by the FCL, if we can make it work), hence no actual contributions would be lost. However, the level of exposure to the content would be lower -- depending on which newspaper we are talking about, by orders of magnitude.

Even if we start with the FDL or FCL, we may want to have a clause in our submission standards that states that content may also be licensed under any other free content license (as in free distribution and free modification) chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation in the future - a kind of "opt-out" clause for the copyleft principle if it can be shown to hurt us more than it helps us.

Regards,

Erik

Daniel-

...

Such developments, in Wikipedia, would often be summarized down to one paragraph or even one sentence ("Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was killed by unknown assailants on May 30, 2004 [1]"), where the Wikinews article would contain as much detail as possible, quotes from all relevant parties (which we can freely copy from outside sources), speculation about the future impact etc.

Wouldn't Wikipedia want an article on Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai so that we could give a detailed summary about him?

Yes, of course. The hypothetical sentence above would be in that article. In an encyclopedic biography, one single event in a person's life will often be just one sentence. A Wikinews article on that same event, on the other hand, could be very detailed.

But I concede that many of our other articles which cover current history are overloaded with what I consider to be needless detail on current events

Yes, but even in these cases, the individual news items are much shorter than the respective Wikinews articles would be. The [[John Kerry]] article is a good example:

"On March 11, after meetings with Democratic superdelegates in Washington and with former opponents Howard Dean and John Edwards, Kerry accumulated the 2,162 delegates required to clinch the nomination."

This one sentence in the article would be a fairly long article on Wikinews: [[Kerry meets with Dean, Edwards; clinches nomination - March 11, 2004]]. This would include concession quotes, details on recently finished contests, photos from the events etc. If you already think the article about the campaign is overloaded now - imagine if all that other stuff would be added, too!

So while original reporting would probably start on a Wikinews project soon after it is started, I fear that that would draw too many people away who are now working on keeping Wikipedia up-to-date.

I see your point, but I think this fear is justified only in the sense that some Wikipedia contributors may choose to spend their time on Wikinews instead of Wikipedia; this argument can be used against any new project. The tasks themselves are very different - and, if we use fully compatible licenses (which of course I also would hope for if at all possible), any useful information can be copied back and forth.

When the pressure on Wikipedia to start including dictionary entries reached a certain point ..

Yes, I fully realize where you're coming from. Our past is however not necessarily representative for our future. While pressure alone is a good reason to consider starting a spin-off project, it is not the only reason for the Wikimedia Foundation, with its focus of creating free educational content. The reason it *was* the only reason in the past is that the organizational identity of Wikimedia is developing as we write this.

The difference here is that while we have clear rules against original research/reporting on Wikipedia, the *pressure* to do it regardless is much lower and will probably always remain so.

For every new project, we should answer a few questions: - Is this within our mission to educate? - Can this be usefully done using a wiki? - Will we be able to reach a critical mass? - Can this be better done within an existing project? ...

The question "Is there pressure from an existing project to do this?" serves to underscore the project priority, but even if there was pressure from our existing projects to do something like, say, build a Micronation Wiki, that doesn't necessarily mean that we would want to do it (although, given the example of the conlangs, this seems to be increasingly the case).

Doing so at the right time will ensure that the aspects of that project we want to have in existing projects will remain viable. Doing so too early, or creating a project with a very limited scope (such as the Sep11wiki), will either result in the failure of that project, or the harming of that aspect of Wikipedia. So yes, I do see any new project through the prism of what it will do for Wikipedia and other existing projects. I see this as being prudent, not as being "very, very dangerous."

It is prudent, and it is not what I was referring to as dangerous. What I refer to as dangerous is a position where we *only* start a project when the pressure from existing projects is too high. Perhaps one should substitute "pressure from existing projects" with "pressure from the community". I absolutely agree with you that there should be a clear and visible interest from the larger Wikimedia Community in a Wikinews project. Any overlap with existing projects is important. And the question whether Wikinews should be launched may be a first test case for a newly defined voting process for new projects.

And those people who are being stopped from doing original reporting will clamor for either letting them do so in Wikipedia

Therein lies your fallacy. I - and others, I believe - would never advocate original reporting in Wikipedia because I do not want to harm Wikipedia. Plausible arguments can be made that dictionary defs, source documents, quotations etc. belong in an encyclopedia. Encarta has a source library, for example, and it has a built-in dictionary. But no plausible argument can be made that an encyclopedia should do original reporting a la CNN, the New York Times or Linux News.

Thus, while I am actively advocating a news project, I would *never* use Wikipedia as my platform of advocacy. It is not closely related enough to justify that. This ties in to my point above that pressure from an existing project alone may often be sufficient, but it is not *necessary* to start a new one.

Then advertise the idea for Wikinews to see if there are enough people to start such a project.

I will do this as soon as the Wikimedia Commons is launched (unless someone else preemtps me, of course). One project at a time..

Starting small is fine, starting too early is not. We need to determine if now is a good time to start such a project.

I agree that we need to gauge if there's interest before we do it.

My goal is to help put a representation all human knowledge under terms that ensure its freedom. That goal is not served when we use licenses that allow for non-free derivative works.

My goal is to find a good balance between building free educational content and exposing people to said content. Obviously each of these components is important. The best way to serve this goal may be a copyleft license, but in an instance where we can gain tenfold exposure by adopting a non-copyleft license, this is something I think we must consider.

I am not opposed to copyleft per se. I just don't want to subscribe to a dogma. The copyleft vs. attribution-only debate is older than this thread, and there are good arguments on both sides.

We are, by far, the largest user of the GNU FDL so I for one am willing to work with the FSF

So am I, of course, and I believe everyone else in this discussion as well. A new version of the FDL or an FCL has the potential of tremendously improving our current situation. There are reasonable people in the FSF and I hope they will listen to our side of the story. Let's just not assume the FCL will become a reality and prepare for the case that it won't. A free content license migration clause for new projects would be a good start - we can get rid of that clause if it turns out to be unnecessary.

Regards,

Erik

Erik Moeller (Eloquence) wrote in part

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

...

??? wrote:

...

...

There is even the question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be more practical in this instance.

...

Then that project would not be free content.

By the definition of the Free Software Foundation, that is correct. However, that definition is not the only one. In fact, most people have an entirely different understanding of "free content."

Actually, mav is not correct even by the FSF's definitions.

The FSF doesn't even use the term "content" in the first place (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content), but they do use the phrase "free documentation". They don't define that phrase specifically, but say "The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software [code]." (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html), and for code they say "The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted." (see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html). So the public domain is free, even according to the FSF.

What mav ''intends'' to say, I believe, is that Wikinews should be COPYLEFT. There are certainly arguments to be made for that position. But public domain and CC-by documents ARE FREE documents. As such, even the FSF would be willing to use them in GNU documentation. PD and CC-by just are not copyleft. (CC-by-sa is copyleft, while CC-by-nd, CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa and CC-by-nc-nd are not even free, at least not by the FSF's standards.)

What is the difference between free and copyleft? Fundamentally, a document is free if ''it'' may be used freely: freely read, freely copied, freely modified, and freely distributed (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html or http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines). A document is copyleft if ''its derivatives'' may be used freely.

For example, the Brothers Grimm published a story "Schneewittchen", and their work ended up (through the passage of time) in the public domain. As such, it was free: freely usable, copyable, modifiable, and distributatble. In 1938, Walt Disney took advantage of the latter two freedoms to create a derivative work "Snow White", which is still copyright today. The Disney movie is not free, even though it's based on the free Grimm story. This was possible because the Grimm story, while free, was not copyleft.

Now, anybody with a soul hates the Walt Disney Company (I joke somewhat), so this gives an indication of the argument in favour of copyleft. But there's also the argument that this doesn't apply to Wikinews. (There are also arguments against copyleft in general, the Disney problem notwithstanding.)

We can have this argument, but let's be clear about what we're arguing over. AFAIK, ''nobody'' is advocating that Wikimedia publish non-free articles. (There is the issue of incorporating fair use items ''within'' articles, such as quotations and images, but that is a different discussion.) The question is whether their freedom must be protected by copyleft.

...

Public domain and non-share-alike attribution licenses encourage mutually incompatible content forks where improvements that create derivative works cannot be re-incorporated back into the original - meaning there is no positive feeback loop.

Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution- only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?" The possibility that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

Does anybody disagree with Erik's final sentence here? This discussion was sparked (at least in today's incarnation) by a Foundation rule referring to licences "like" the GNU FDL. We should continue to discuss and refine our ideas about what copyleft protection Wikimedia should use for our free documents; but as far as ''that'' rule is concerned, I believe that all we need to do is to clarify that by "like" the GNU FDL, we mean «free».

-- Toby

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

The FDL doesn't mention *content* as you rightly state - that is something that needs to be fixed.

I don't think that this matters very much; they have a philosophical objection to that term, but I just spoke of "free documents" instead.

I'm advocating the full use of the word free (no cost and copyleft).

This is a very bad idea.

The Free Software Foundation has been around for a long time, they're the ones that principally promote the use of the word "free", and they're the ones that people look to to define that word. We should use it, if at all, in their well established sense.

In this sense, "free" does NOT include «no cost» or «copyleft». The words for that are "no cost" (or "gratis") and "copyleft".

I'm speaking here of how we should use the term "free" in claiming that we use "free" licences like the GNU FDL. I do believe that we should /also/ offer our articles gratis, and I'm willing to accept that our licences may /also/ be copyleft (like the GNU FDL in fact is).

That said, what should the Foundation policy that worried Anthère say? Now it says "free" and "like the GNU FDL", which Anthère found confusing. So we need to clarify what we mean by these phrases. Do we only mean «free» (in the sense of the FSF), or do we in fact mean «free and copyleft», as a policy? (Both of these qualify as "like" the GNU FDL.) If you're arguing for the latter, then Erik's objection in the case of Wikinews applies. If you're arguing for the former, then the policy text can be edited to clarify things right now.

(«gratis» doesn't enter into the matter with the licences. But we might want to make no cost a policy all the same, if we want to say that Wikimedia will never charge for, say, a distribution on compact discs or cheap newsprint. Other people will still be able to charge, under the GNU FDL, or indeed any licence that the FSF would consider free.)

-- Toby

--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:

I don't think it is something that needs to be "fixed". It's very deliberately left out, because the FSF, as detailed on their website (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content) does not believe even using the word "content" fits with their goals, and would prefer its use died out entirely. If there were a "GNU Free Content License", *that* would be something that needed to be fixed.

And the FDL was very deliberately written to work well for free software documentation, manulals and textbooks. Its use for non-text-based content was not forseen - yet that is the situation we are faced with. But if they have a semantic hangup on the use of the word 'content' then we could use a different name for the license.

I certainly don't see Wikimedia as producing "content".

What do you call images, sound, and video then? They are not documents. What word do you suggest we use to describe what we have? Is the free content movement operating under a bad name? If so what should it call itself?

'Media' *might* work but has some ambiguity issues. 'Publication' might also work. 'Copyleft' would be redundant. Any other ideas?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:

.... I'm not sure what the "free content" movement should call itself. "Creative commons" is one term I rather like, as it emphasizes the space (a "commons") in which many different materials (or simply "stuff") can co-exist rather than grouping the materials themself under a single moniker, but the term seems to already be taken by a particular instantiation of the idea.

Actually I just found out that CC founder Larry Lessig is now on the FSF board of directors. Hopefully this will mean that we will be able to more successfully lobby for a FDL 2.0 and CC-by-sa that are compatible and thus be able to migrate to the CC-by-sa instead of essentially writing a new GNU license.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Thanks all :-)

I am foreseeing, with a pinch of anxiety, how blurry we should make our bylaws to include all povs... Erik sentence appears fine to me, but I am troubled by all the interpretations offered.

--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:

Erik Moeller (Eloquence) wrote in part

...

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

...

...

??? wrote:

...

...

...

There is even the question if we really want to force Wikinews

users to copyleft their

...

...

...

content, or if the public domain or an

attribution license wouldn't be

...

...

...

more practical in this instance.

...

...

Then that project would not be free content.

...

By the definition of the Free Software Foundation,

that is correct.

...

However, that definition is not the only one. In

fact, most people have an

...

entirely different understanding of "free content."

Actually, mav is not correct even by the FSF's definitions.

The FSF doesn't even use the term "content" in the first place (see

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content),

but they do use the phrase "free documentation". They don't define that phrase specifically, but say "The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software [code]." (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html), and for code they say "The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted." (see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html). So the public domain is free, even according to the FSF.

What mav ''intends'' to say, I believe, is that Wikinews should be COPYLEFT. There are certainly arguments to be made for that position. But public domain and CC-by documents ARE FREE documents. As such, even the FSF would be willing to use them in GNU documentation. PD and CC-by just are not copyleft. (CC-by-sa is copyleft, while CC-by-nd, CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa and CC-by-nc-nd are not even free, at least not by the FSF's standards.)

What is the difference between free and copyleft? Fundamentally, a document is free if ''it'' may be used freely: freely read, freely copied, freely modified, and freely distributed (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html or http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines). A document is copyleft if ''its derivatives'' may be used freely.

For example, the Brothers Grimm published a story "Schneewittchen", and their work ended up (through the passage of time) in the public domain. As such, it was free: freely usable, copyable, modifiable, and distributatble. In 1938, Walt Disney took advantage of the latter two freedoms to create a derivative work "Snow White", which is still copyright today. The Disney movie is not free, even though it's based on the free Grimm story. This was possible because the Grimm story, while free, was not copyleft.

Now, anybody with a soul hates the Walt Disney Company (I joke somewhat), so this gives an indication of the argument in favour of copyleft. But there's also the argument that this doesn't apply to Wikinews. (There are also arguments against copyleft in general, the Disney problem notwithstanding.)

We can have this argument, but let's be clear about what we're arguing over. AFAIK, ''nobody'' is advocating that Wikimedia publish non-free articles. (There is the issue of incorporating fair use items ''within'' articles, such as quotations and images, but that is a different discussion.) The question is whether their freedom must be protected by copyleft.

...

...

Public domain and non-share-alike attribution

licenses encourage mutually

...

...

incompatible content forks where improvements that

create derivative

...

...

works cannot be re-incorporated back into the

original - meaning there

...

...

is no positive feeback loop.

...

Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs.

public domain / attribution-

...

only licenses is "What is more important to me -

enlarging the body of

...

content available under a free license, or making

sure that as many people

...

as possbile will be exposed to the content in

question?" The possibility

...

that we may want to answer this question

differently for some Wikimedia

...

projects than for others should not be discounted

out of hand.

Does anybody disagree with Erik's final sentence here? This discussion was sparked (at least in today's incarnation) by a Foundation rule referring to licences "like" the GNU FDL. We should continue to discuss and refine our ideas about what copyleft protection Wikimedia should use for our free documents; but as far as ''that'' rule is concerned, I believe that all we need to do is to clarify that by "like" the GNU FDL, we mean �free�.

-- Toby _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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--- Angela sloog77@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

Currently, all our projects are under the GFDL. However, there is no reason future projects need to be.

There is a tremendously important reason why all our text-based projects should be under the same (or at least compatible) license: To alow inter-project copying. It would be absurd to not be able to copy text back and forth between Wikibooks and Wikipedia, for example.

All our text should be under the same license (images can very easily be regarded as aggregations, so we can be more lax with them, IMO). We chose the FDL, so for the time being we are stuck with the FDL. In the future I would like to see us migrate to a GNU FCL or at least to an improved FDL.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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--- Angela sloog77@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

... Fixing the GFDL would be a perfect solution, but until that happens, I don't think we should rule out the possibility that future projects should be allowed to take an alternative route.

And the inability to use the GFDL would be a strong argument against such a project because of the interim incompatibility and/or adhering to a non-free license (not to mention inter-project confusion) - as I've already stated. But I don't forsee any such projects in the immediate pipelime. Wikinews seems to be a mid to long term goal - 2 to 4 years or until Wikipedia.org is in the top 100 websites (whichever comes first). We should have the license situation fixed by then.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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