Robert Horning writes:
I've seen other websites try this with Wikimedia content, and I don't know how you give "full notice to the community" of a license change.
I regard this as essentially a trivial problem. You could put it on the front page of each language's Wikipedia, for example. Those who never see the Project front pages might not see such a notice -- but they probably don't know we're having a fundraiser, either.
Furthermore, I'm willing to bet that the set of contributors who both (a) insist on an old version of GFDL and (b) care about it enough to remove content if migration happens, and (c) wouldn't hear about the migration is a very, very, small set of contributors.
If you are modifying the license terms outside of the terms of the GFDL, you need to renegotiate with that contributor...including all anonymous contributors.
I don't believe this is required, as a practical matter. Consider, for example, credit-card companies. They change the terms of user agreements all the time, unilaterally. They issue long, complicated notices when they do this. Amazingly, this triggers neither mass departures nor massive negotiations with individuals. And they are dealing with far larger populations than we are.
I agree that you're right in theory, of course. In practice, not so big a problem.
Such a license change (barring massive cooperation from the Free Software Foundation to change the GFDL itself using the "or later version" escape clause) would require all contributions to be removed from Wikipedia by those authors who didn't agree to the change.
We are, of course, assuming cooperation from FSF as a prerequisite for all this. As Jimbo says, this whole discussion is a product of three-way negotiations between FSF, CC, and WMF. If FSF suddenly said, hey, we're never going to do anything to support migration to a version of GFDL that looks like a version of CC-BY-SA, we could stop this whole discussion immediately.
What I've been telling people is that if you don't trust the FSF Board to be custodians of the meaning of GFDL, then you have bigger problems with the GFDL than anything Wikimedia Foundation could create. Me, I trust the FSFers.
An attempt by the WMF to go this route would simply mean a fork in Wikipedia where "purists" who want to maintain the GFDL version of Wikipedia would have everything that currently exists, and the CC- by version would be a hollow shell of the original version of the Wikipedia.
I think the risk of a fork is very low, at this late date. But even if it happened, the notion that "purists" would somehow control the "original" Wikipedia while the CC-BY-SA version would be a "hollow shell" strikes me as less likely than the other way around.
BTW, you can count me in an a GFDL ideologist if you want, and my contributions are under the terms of the GFDL.... and I intend to enforce that license on anything I've contributed to Wikimedia projects where the GFDL is the explicit default license of the project.
I of course support your prerogative to do this. I think that any migration has to accommodate GFDL "ideologists" and allow for their removal of their content if they believe the project is not adequately copyleft for them.
But then again, those websites generally got so little web traffic that most of them fold up after less than a year of operation.
There's also the notion that we law students learned early on -- "de minimis non curat lex." But that's okay, since you wouldn't have to seek legal recourse to address your objections -- you'd just remove your contributions, citing GFDL concerns, and no one would stop you.
But remember (a) we're talking about migration in cooperation with FSF, not in opposition to FSF, and (b) the CC-BY-SA license is designed to be viral to the same degree as GFDL, without being as cumbersome.
At the end of the day, what you have to ask yourself is this: is our primary purpose as Wikipedians to get the knowledge out to the world for free (and in a way that keeps it free), or is our purpose to privilege an older version of GFDL regardless of whether it inhibits our ability to provide the world information for free? I tend to think our purpose is more the first than the second.
--Mike
On 22/11/2007, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Horning writes:
Such a license change (barring massive cooperation from the Free Software Foundation to change the GFDL itself using the "or later version" escape clause) would require all contributions to be removed from Wikipedia by those authors who didn't agree to the change.
We are, of course, assuming cooperation from FSF as a prerequisite for all this. As Jimbo says, this whole discussion is a product of three-way negotiations between FSF, CC, and WMF. If FSF suddenly said, hey, we're never going to do anything to support migration to a version of GFDL that looks like a version of CC-BY-SA, we could stop this whole discussion immediately. What I've been telling people is that if you don't trust the FSF Board to be custodians of the meaning of GFDL, then you have bigger problems with the GFDL than anything Wikimedia Foundation could create. Me, I trust the FSFers.
Yes. There's no plans to do this other than using the "or later" clause.
And if you (you, Robert) didn't mean "or later" as well ... what did you think you were doing when you clicked "submit"?
- d.
David Gerard schrieb, am 22.11.2007 09:47:
And if you (you, Robert) didn't mean "or later" as well ... what did you think you were doing when you clicked "submit"?
This is no suitable legal argument (according to german law). Most probably we will never find out what all contributors were thinking.
If the GFDL has the clause '...and after submitting an article to Wikipedia I'll jump naked from the golden gate bridge with an umbrella' you (when you were a German) can still click "submit" and (almost) all other clauses are legal binding, while this won't be. But this is getting a little bit offtopic.
You can't argue legal arguments with common sense. But in the actual case the submitter can act perfectly in commons sense: There are a lot of cases where people (in Germany) notice an '...or later' clause and sign a contract anyhow because they know, that this clause is ineffective.
Bye, Tim.
On 22/11/2007, Tim 'avatar' Bartel wikipedia@computerkultur.org wrote:
You can't argue legal arguments with common sense. But in the actual case the submitter can act perfectly in commons sense: There are a lot of cases where people (in Germany) notice an '...or later' clause and sign a contract anyhow because they know, that this clause is ineffective.
OK. Are there cases where they sue for copyright violation and the defender took them at their word?
What you're saying would imply that we have a problem having German contributors to Wikimedia projects at all and the country should be blocked. I urge you to seek a way around this.
- d.
David Gerard schrieb, am 22.11.2007 10:04:
On 22/11/2007, Tim 'avatar' Bartel wikipedia@computerkultur.org wrote:
You can't argue legal arguments with common sense. But in the actual case the submitter can act perfectly in commons sense: There are a lot of cases where people (in Germany) notice an '...or later' clause and sign a contract anyhow because they know, that this clause is ineffective.
OK. Are there cases where they sue for copyright violation and the defender took them at their word?
None that I'm aware of.
What you're saying would imply that we have a problem having German contributors to Wikimedia projects at all and the country should be blocked. I urge you to seek a way around this.
Of course this won't be possible in practice.
Like I wrote in another post, the main problem is in my opinion that on one hand 'we' tell people, that the GFDL avoids or massively handicaps the commercial reuse in print (to convince them to 'give us' their content), while on the other hand we try to ease up reuse of our content. While our mission clearly strives to the latter, I'm pretty sure we will get problems with the people who believed in the further argument.
Bye, Tim.
On Nov 22, 2007 1:16 AM, Tim 'avatar' Bartel wikipedia@computerkultur.org wrote:
<snip>
Like I wrote in another post, the main problem is in my opinion that on
one hand 'we' tell people, that the GFDL avoids or massively handicaps the commercial reuse in print (to convince them to 'give us' their content), while on the other hand we try to ease up reuse of our content. While our mission clearly strives to the latter, I'm pretty sure we will get problems with the people who believed in the further argument.
Some of us, myself included, believe that commercial reuse SHOULD BE burdensome. Or more specifically, if a commercial publisher is going to profit on the back of content they didn't create and with no funds going to the authors, then it should be dreadfully obvious that the content in question is free content, and not the run-of-the-mill restricted content that they always publish. In some ways the GFDL is overboard in that regard (i.e. you don't need a long license document for a single image), but I believe publishers should be burdened with making their use of free content clearly identified.
Also, I realize that not everyone feels the same way about being burdensome.
-Robert Rohde
Robert Rohde wrote:
Some of us, myself included, believe that commercial reuse SHOULD BE burdensome. Or more specifically, if a commercial publisher is going to profit on the back of content they didn't create and with no funds going to the authors, then it should be dreadfully obvious that the content in question is free content, and not the run-of-the-mill restricted content that they always publish. In some ways the GFDL is overboard in that regard (i.e. you don't need a long license document for a single image), but I believe publishers should be burdened with making their use of free content clearly identified.
Also, I realize that not everyone feels the same way about being burdensome.
I have no problem with commercial reuse. In a way it seems to me that NC licences are counterproductive. We want the viral nature of the licence to infect the commercial sites.
On the other hand, when it comes to fair use material, I don't think that it should be our duty to do the fair use evaluation for commercial operations.
Ec
On Nov 22, 2007 1:22 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robert Rohde wrote:
Some of us, myself included, believe that commercial reuse SHOULD BE burdensome. Or more specifically, if a commercial publisher is going to profit on the back of content they didn't create and with no funds going
to
the authors, then it should be dreadfully obvious that the content in question is free content, and not the run-of-the-mill restricted content that they always publish. In some ways the GFDL is overboard in that
regard
(i.e. you don't need a long license document for a single image), but I believe publishers should be burdened with making their use of free
content
clearly identified.
Also, I realize that not everyone feels the same way about being
burdensome. I have no problem with commercial reuse. In a way it seems to me that NC licences are counterproductive. We want the viral nature of the licence to infect the commercial sites.
<snip>
Actually, I would be careful about this language. I don't want them "infected". If they choose to embrace GFDL / CC-SA of their own free will, then fine. But free content shouldn't be a disease that ambushes unsuspecting publishers. To that end, being very clear about the implications of these licenses is important.
Frankly calling it "free content" actually feels like a misnomer when using this "free" material comes with a heavy burden that can hypothetical deprive people of income from their own work.
-Robert Rohde
Robert Rohde wrote:
I have no problem with commercial reuse. In a way it seems to me that NC licences are counterproductive. We want the viral nature of the licence to infect the commercial sites.
Actually, I would be careful about this language. I don't want them "infected". If they choose to embrace GFDL / CC-SA of their own free will, then fine. But free content shouldn't be a disease that ambushes unsuspecting publishers. To that end, being very clear about the implications of these licenses is important.
Frankly calling it "free content" actually feels like a misnomer when using this "free" material comes with a heavy burden that can hypothetical deprive people of income from their own work.
There are good viruses and bad viruses. Something under a GFDL needs to be marked as such, and requires at least that the licensing be noted. In theory then, a person knows about the licence before he uses the material. If he doesn't want his writing infected, he doesn't use it. As for unsuspecting publishers, it should be a matter of the contract between the publisher and author whether or not GFDL material is used. If the author breaches the contract it needs to be worked out between him and the publisher.
Maybe the whole idea of "income from one's own work" needs to be redefined. When it goes 70 years beyond one's death it's no longer a question of one's own benefit, or the benefit of one's own dependent children in the case of an early death. 25 years after death would be enough for that. Most writing has outlived its shelf life long before that. The tiny residual potential probably costs more to administer than it's worth.
Ec
Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
of cases where people (in Germany) notice an '...or later' clause and sign a contract anyhow because they know, that this clause is ineffective.
German law applies *in Germany*, not *to Germans*. As soon as they (or their works) move beyond borders, they are exposed to other legal systems. (Go to China and kill someone -- you might be sentenced to death.) So if the clause is ineffective under German law, you can feel "safe" only as long as you (and your work) stay in that country.
Suppose the WMF in the year 2057 decides to use your Wikipedia articles in accordance with GFDL version 17. You're in Germany and claim that you never legally agreed to this, and you sue WMF for copyright infringement in a German court of law. That might stop WMF from reusing your articles in this way in Germany, but it doesn't stop WMF from reusing your articles in this way in Mexico. If you're going to sue anybody for copyright infringement in Mexico, you must find arguments that work under Mexican law.
The state of Bavaria claims they own Hitler's copyright, which they confiscated in 1948, and sued a Swedish publisher of a translated "Mein Kampf" (1992). But the Swedish supreme court in 1998 said a state cannot legally confiscate copyright for the purpose of blocking publishing, since that would mean censorship, and turned the case down. The book is sold in stores (part 1, ISBN 978-91-7123-100-0 and part 2, ISBN 978-91-7123-101-7).
On Nov 22, 2007 9:46 PM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
of cases where people (in Germany) notice an '...or later' clause and sign a contract anyhow because they know, that this clause is ineffective.
German law applies *in Germany*, not *to Germans*. As soon as they (or their works) move beyond borders, they are exposed to other legal systems. (Go to China and kill someone -- you might be sentenced to death.) So if the clause is ineffective under German law, you can feel "safe" only as long as you (and your work) stay in that country.
Agreed, and I don't think Tim thought otherwise. I know I didn't.
Of course, seeing as the Projects in the German language (or the French) rank in the top 5 of visits and are massively accessed from Germany (or France), we might want to consider *not* making Wikipedia illegal in Germany (or France). Which, if I am not mistaken, may happen if *one* person actually won a trial on those basis.
I will also take a wild guess and say that many countries in Europe (and elsewhere) actually share the same kind of legal grounds.
But then hey, I couldn't be more biased :-)
Delphine
David Gerard wrote:
Yes. There's no plans to do this other than using the "or later" clause.
And if you (you, Robert) didn't mean "or later" as well ... what did you think you were doing when you clicked "submit"?
Incidentally, the "Version 1.2 or any later version" wording on the edit window is an exclusively English Wikipedia phenomenon, but does not appear elsewhere that I am aware. Click edit at Wiktionary and you'll notice that you are only agreeing to release it under the GFDL. Even the wording on enwp only dates from March http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Edittools&diff=114707455&oldid=113156147. Hopefully there is more to the argument than the "clicking submit" point, considering that the "or later" clause tends to be buried in some project-space "Copyright" page.
Dominic
On Nov 22, 2007 1:14 AM, Dmcdevit dmcdevit@cox.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Yes. There's no plans to do this other than using the "or later" clause.
And if you (you, Robert) didn't mean "or later" as well ... what did you think you were doing when you clicked "submit"?
Incidentally, the "Version 1.2 or any later version" wording on the edit window is an exclusively English Wikipedia phenomenon, but does not appear elsewhere that I am aware. Click edit at Wiktionary and you'll notice that you are only agreeing to release it under the GFDL. Even the wording on enwp only dates from March < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Edittools&diff=11470...
.
Hopefully there is more to the argument than the "clicking submit" point, considering that the "or later" clause tends to be buried in some project-space "Copyright" page.
FYI, if you don't specify a version number, then the current GFDL says
that reusers are free to rely on any version of the GFDL ever officially published (past or future) when reusing your content.
-Robert Rohde
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/11/2007, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Horning writes:
Such a license change (barring massive cooperation from the Free Software Foundation to change the GFDL itself using the "or later version" escape clause) would require all contributions to be removed from Wikipedia by those authors who didn't agree to the change.
We are, of course, assuming cooperation from FSF as a prerequisite for all this. As Jimbo says, this whole discussion is a product of three-way negotiations between FSF, CC, and WMF. If FSF suddenly said, hey, we're never going to do anything to support migration to a version of GFDL that looks like a version of CC-BY-SA, we could stop this whole discussion immediately. What I've been telling people is that if you don't trust the FSF Board to be custodians of the meaning of GFDL, then you have bigger problems with the GFDL than anything Wikimedia Foundation could create. Me, I trust the FSFers.
Yes. There's no plans to do this other than using the "or later" clause.
And if you (you, Robert) didn't mean "or later" as well ... what did you think you were doing when you clicked "submit"?
- d.
What I'm talking about here is a simply presumption that you don't even need to involve the FSF in this discussion, that that all you simply need to perform is a mass license migration, ignoring the fact that all of the content is currently licensed under the GFDL.
I'm not suggesting here that some significant improvements to the GFDL can't happen, but I can't even begin to imagine how Linus Torvalds (who is one who has been very vocal about some of the changes to the GPL... in part due to this issue) would react if the FSF went and simply declared that some version of the Creative Commons license suite was in fact "the next version of the GFDL". I suppose that the FSF is certainly free to do this, but it would lead not to just a mass exodus from the GFDL, but nearly all licenses that the FSF currently sponsors. I don't see how the FSF could ever be trusted again on a licenses if they got that brazen.
What I expect that the FSF is going to do with the GFDL is to work out some legal language to make it work with Wikipedia a bit better. They really aren't going to care much about the rest of the Wikimedia sister projects, unless those representing the WMF with the FSF are going to even bring the issue up. The only reason why Wikipedia is even being of concern is because it is the largest single repository of GFDL'd content that is available... and from that perspective Wikipedia is a major stakeholder in the conversation to any future version of the GFDL. For a huge number of reasons I don't expect monumental shifts in the GFDL. GPL/GFDL compatibility is from my perspective something far more important (and should be important to the FSF) than CC-by-SA/GFDL compatibility, but that is another issue entirely. I certainly don't know how you could get GPL/CC-by-SA compatibility to work at all.
--Robert Horning
On 22/11/2007, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
What I'm talking about here is a simply presumption that you don't even need to involve the FSF in this discussion, that that all you simply need to perform is a mass license migration, ignoring the fact that all of the content is currently licensed under the GFDL.
I don't believe anyone has *actually* proposed or recommended that we do that, other than as a thought experiment!
On 22/11/2007, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I'm not suggesting here that some significant improvements to the GFDL can't happen, but I can't even begin to imagine how Linus Torvalds (who is one who has been very vocal about some of the changes to the GPL... in part due to this issue) would react if the FSF went and simply declared that some version of the Creative Commons license suite was in fact "the next version of the GFDL".
It's entirely unclear how that's relevant even by analogy, given that Torvalds' stuff is all GPLv2 and expressly not "or later."
GPL/GFDL compatibility is from my perspective something far more important (and should be important to the FSF) than CC-by-SA/GFDL compatibility, but that is another issue entirely. I certainly don't know how you could get GPL/CC-by-SA compatibility to work at all.
Have you read GPLv3? And how it achieves compatibility with the Apache v2 licence and the AGPL.
I would be amazed if the FSF were as careless as you hypothesise them to be.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/11/2007, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I'm not suggesting here that some significant improvements to the GFDL can't happen, but I can't even begin to imagine how Linus Torvalds (who is one who has been very vocal about some of the changes to the GPL... in part due to this issue) would react if the FSF went and simply declared that some version of the Creative Commons license suite was in fact "the next version of the GFDL".
It's entirely unclear how that's relevant even by analogy, given that Torvalds' stuff is all GPLv2 and expressly not "or later."
And you want to know why Torvalds is insisting on GPL v2 only? This isn't accidental, and it does show some distrust with the FSF that they may not do the right thing in the future. I'm not here insisting that the GFDL v. 1.2 is the one and only true version for now and eternity, but there is a trust issue here with the community of individuals who use this license that is not being addressed effectively.
GPL/GFDL compatibility is from my perspective something far more important (and should be important to the FSF) than CC-by-SA/GFDL compatibility, but that is another issue entirely. I certainly don't know how you could get GPL/CC-by-SA compatibility to work at all.
Have you read GPLv3? And how it achieves compatibility with the Apache v2 licence and the AGPL.
I would be amazed if the FSF were as careless as you hypothesise them to be.
- d.
If this happens where compatibility between the CC-by-SA license is the only consideration for a future license, I will have to consider the updated version of the GFDL to be an utter failure.
BTW, I haven't read the "official" GPLv3, but I have read draft versions of it from time to time. And have watched some of the diffs between the various draft versions as well. Some of this is to fix problems that RMS sees are an issue (such as the Tivo-related stuff, and the expansion of the patent issue section) and some is to adapt to the newer technology that wasn't originally anticipated when the GFDL was originally written... especially web services and software distribution models that don't use a traditional operating system like Unix or Windows. I have also read some of the drafts of the updated GFDL, and so far I haven't seen anything so drastic to suggest that the GFDL is going to have a massive overhaul here, although there are some explicit concerns that have been addressed. Full compatibility and harmonization with CC-by-SA or any other CC license seems like a good idea, but a dream, and I'll have to see it to believe it. The GFDL fills a different niche in document licenses, and I have a hard time seeing RMS give up some of his pet ideas that went into the GFDL originally.
-- Robert Horning
On 22/11/2007, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Have you read GPLv3? And how it achieves compatibility with the Apache v2 licence and the AGPL. I would be amazed if the FSF were as careless as you hypothesise them to be.
If this happens where compatibility between the CC-by-SA license is the only consideration for a future license, I will have to consider the updated version of the GFDL to be an utter failure. BTW, I haven't read the "official" GPLv3, but I have read draft versions of it from time to time. And have watched some of the diffs between the various draft versions as well. Some of this is to fix problems that RMS sees are an issue (such as the Tivo-related stuff, and the expansion of the patent issue section) and some is to adapt to the newer technology that wasn't originally anticipated when the GFDL was originally written... especially web services and software distribution models that don't use a traditional operating system like Unix or Windows. I have also read some of the drafts of the updated GFDL, and so far I haven't seen anything so drastic to suggest that the GFDL is going to have a massive overhaul here, although there are some explicit concerns that have been addressed. Full compatibility and harmonization with CC-by-SA or any other CC license seems like a good idea, but a dream, and I'll have to see it to believe it. The GFDL fills a different niche in document licenses, and I have a hard time seeing RMS give up some of his pet ideas that went into the GFDL originally.
Well, yeah. It's essentially a book license. (Would I be right in guessing that this is why you like it just how it is for books?)
The problem is it's a bloody awful licence for massively-edited wiki-based content in lumps less than a book.
- d.
On 22/11/2007, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Horning writes:
I've seen other websites try this with Wikimedia content, and I don't know how you give "full notice to the community" of a license change.
I regard this as essentially a trivial problem. You could put it on the front page of each language's Wikipedia, for example. Those who never see the Project front pages might not see such a notice -- but they probably don't know we're having a fundraiser, either.
What does a fundraiser have to do with it? Are you suggesting that people that don't donate don't deserve to have their legal rights respected?
Furthermore, I'm willing to bet that the set of contributors who both (a) insist on an old version of GFDL and (b) care about it enough to remove content if migration happens, and (c) wouldn't hear about the migration is a very, very, small set of contributors.
It only takes one.
If you are modifying the license terms outside of the terms of the GFDL, you need to renegotiate with that contributor...including all anonymous contributors.
I don't believe this is required, as a practical matter. Consider, for example, credit-card companies. They change the terms of user agreements all the time, unilaterally. They issue long, complicated notices when they do this. Amazingly, this triggers neither mass departures nor massive negotiations with individuals. And they are dealing with far larger populations than we are.
I agree that you're right in theory, of course. In practice, not so big a problem.
Credit card companies have a list of people they need to notify. We don't. They also have a clause reserving the right to make unilateral changes (Question: Do credit card companies in Germany have similar clauses, or are they invalid under the same principle? If not, what's the difference?), we're not sure we have that right internationally, which could cause serious problems.
I of course support your prerogative to do this. I think that any migration has to accommodate GFDL "ideologists" and allow for their removal of their content if they believe the project is not adequately copyleft for them.
You've yet to describe a practical way of removing content.
At the end of the day, what you have to ask yourself is this: is our primary purpose as Wikipedians to get the knowledge out to the world for free (and in a way that keeps it free), or is our purpose to privilege an older version of GFDL regardless of whether it inhibits our ability to provide the world information for free? I tend to think our purpose is more the first than the second.
You're the lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the law doesn't care what our primary purpose is. We still have to obey it, even if it goes against what we're trying to do.
If you are modifying the license terms outside of the terms of the GFDL, you need to renegotiate with that contributor...including all anonymous contributors.
I can't imagine that anonymous contributors have any practical rights when it comes to this. Since we can rarely trace an IP address back to a single individual with complete accuracy, it becomes impossible to say who exactly holds the rights on contributions made by anons. I would be inclined to say that the content rights of an anon are basically void by virtue of being anonymous. you can't anonymously hold rights to something, it makes no sense.
--Andrew Whitworth
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 22/11/2007, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Horning writes:
If you are modifying the license terms outside of the terms of the GFDL, you need to renegotiate with that contributor...including all anonymous contributors.
I don't believe this is required, as a practical matter. Consider, for example, credit-card companies. They change the terms of user agreements all the time, unilaterally. They issue long, complicated notices when they do this. Amazingly, this triggers neither mass departures nor massive negotiations with individuals. And they are dealing with far larger populations than we are.
I agree that you're right in theory, of course. In practice, not so big a problem.
Credit card companies have a list of people they need to notify. We don't. They also have a clause reserving the right to make unilateral changes (Question: Do credit card companies in Germany have similar clauses, or are they invalid under the same principle? If not, what's the difference?), we're not sure we have that right internationally, which could cause serious problems.
I would like to add here that credit card companies, in the original agreement, formally let you know that they can modify the agreement at any time in the future. In other words, they have installed a legal "or later version" clause in the contract just like the FSF has done for its licenses. They are also governed under separate laws that have nothing to do with copyright... and that is a critical issue here. We are talking copyright law, where the individual conributor is presumed to own the copyright for everything they have contributed. You can argue that the WMF has the "right" to change the licenses of its websites, but as a practical matter that simply isn't the case. It really is an either/or situation where if the WMF wants to change the licenses, they have to dump the existing content. And this is where the massive fork in Wikipedia would happen if the licenses were to be changed.
Again, in regards to credit cards, they have to give you notice when the rules do change, under the presumption that if you disagree with the new banking rules that you can cancel the agreement and move your money or your debt somewhere else that has rules that you agree with. In the case of GFDL'd content on Wikipedia, I suppose that you have the "right" to move your content to another website or remove it, as you have presumed here Mike, but as a practical matter I don't see how you can disengage all of the content that I wrote on Wikipedia, much less others who are insisting on maintaining their copyright under the terms of the GFDL. Or more to the point, this is opening up the potential of a huge class-action lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation if this license change is insisted on... of course without the cooperation of the Free Software Foundation. With the involvement of the FSF is another story, but that wasn't what I was responding to.
As a side note.... it seems as thought the original version of the Wikipedia was released under the terms of the GFDL v. 1.0, but was later updated to version 1.2. I don't think there was any major controversy when this happened, but it is one case of where I know a license change did occur for Wikipedia with the escape clause. Am I remembering this correctly... for anybody who is an "old-timer" here? In other words, this update for the GFDL has already happened at least once. I know for a fact that I updated the "official" GFDL license on en.wikibooks when the mailing address for the Free Software Foundation changed... to put that version in conformance with the "official version" released by the FSF.
-- Robert Horning
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