All,
after some internal discussion with the licensing update committee, I'm proposing the following final site terms to be implemented on all Wikimedia projects that currently use GFDL as their primary content license, as well as the relevant multimedia templates:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
Please note that these aren't quite yet ready for translation yet (hence labeled draft). Please provide feedback here or on the talk page, ideally by Thursday night UTC so we can move the process forward on Friday.
In terms of implementing these changes, I suggest the following:
1) That the relevant site configuration variables are updated on June 15; 2) That, additionally, a central "Terms of use" page is created on wikimediafoundation.org to house the "terms of use" above, which can be replaced with a localized version whenever one is created; 3) That the relevant MediaWiki-messages are force-updated on all projects to the English version above, or any translations already created by June 15; 4) That the revised MediaWiki-messages are also translated through translatewiki.net and hence additional translations will be rolled out through normal i18n upgrades.
Regarding 3) and 4), this may best be achieved by creating new MediaWiki messages. I would appreciate the advice of our translation and tech team on this, and of course on the entire proposed process. (I realize that there's not nearly enough time for any number of translations, but we have a fixed deadline of beginning the roll-out of this change by June 15.)
For multimedia, the licensing committee and the Wikimedia Commons community are still discussing the best update strategy, but it will probably involve a bot updating the existing templates. We're also hoping to run a CentralNotice to explain the process to the communities so that people can help to fix up pages and policies.
Thanks for any help in moving this forward, Erik
2009/6/9 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
All,
after some internal discussion with the licensing update committee, I'm proposing the following final site terms to be implemented on all Wikimedia projects that currently use GFDL as their primary content license, as well as the relevant multimedia templates:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long
The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.
Moving on to the Project:Terms of use
A Terms of use is a working document. Vision Statements can go elsewhere
"general public" horrid apart from the fact it is flat out false (legal persons and governments are not normally considered general public).
"For compatibility reasons, we also ask you to license it under the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts)."
Not good at all. Firstly the reasons are unimportant and secondly we don't ask we require.
"Information for multimedia contributors"
I think you mean non-text media here (yes I'm aware this in turn creates issues with tables). Strictly speaking images are not on their own multimedia.
Information for re-users
Giving what is effectively legal advice is always kinda dicey. Getting it wrong worse still.
"Attribution of text: To re-distribute an article page in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article or articles you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.)"
Completely false. This at absolute best only applies to content created after June 15 with no content imported from non wikimedia sites.
"Attribution of rich media: Rich media files must be attributed in any reasonable manner consistent with the chosen license specified by the contributor(s)."
Reasonable to the medium or means. Kinda dicey. Should probably stick to "must be attributed in a manner consistent with the chosen license specified by the contributor(s).
btw "chosen license specified by the contributor(s)." is a horrific bit of phrasing.
Attribution of externally contributed content yeah its a sensible sub-clause but it comes in the wrong place. Since the Attribution of text doesn't even consider the possibility of text that doesn't fall under it's remit you've got a nice internal contradiction in the TOS.
Copyleft/Share and Share Alike:
You start talking about pages here when before you were talking about articles. Consistent terminology should be used.
Terms for multimedia files
Another outright error. The eligible files definition claims say FAL (and more importantly GPL) are eligible for additional licensing.
In practice that whole section would be better left to commons which has a fair number of people who really know what they are doing with regards to image licensing. Heh The the Licensing update/Implementation phrasing is actually so bad it release the wikipedia logo under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.
All in all the whole things suffers from being sloppy and appears rushed. Poor and inconsistent phrasing, internal contradictions and legaly questionable assertions.
The June 15 target is unrealistic at this point since some of the issues are going to be tricky to fix (an awful lot of thought has gone into the english Terms for edit screen over the years) or requires actual decisions.
2009/6/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.
I make it a 762% increase.
2009/6/11 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/6/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.
I make it a 762% increase.
My figure was based on the full 23 words.
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 19:26, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
The current terms are brief, yes, but only because the string "GFDL" in that sentence links to a footnote. That footnote (located at the end of [[MediaWiki:Edittools]]) currently says "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.", with a link to the full license text.
Given that, it'd be trivial to change that sentence to "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under [link]our license[/link]" and update the footnote accordingly.
2009/6/11 Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 19:26, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
The current terms are brief, yes, but only because the string "GFDL" in that sentence links to a footnote. That footnote (located at the end of [[MediaWiki:Edittools]]) currently says "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.", with a link to the full license text.
Given that, it'd be trivial to change that sentence to "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under [link]our license[/link]" and update the footnote accordingly.
Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really matter.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 15:59, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really matter.
True, but my larger point wasn't about the footnote's contents - it was that the current notice is as short as it is because it links elsewhere for the actual license details. (Similarly, the current notice links elsewhere to define "copyright" and "verifiable".) By extension, we can keep the revised notice relatively brief by using links to refer elsewhere for license text and/or discussion.
2009/6/11 Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 15:59, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really matter.
True, but my larger point wasn't about the footnote's contents - it was that the current notice is as short as it is because it links elsewhere for the actual license details. (Similarly, the current notice links elsewhere to define "copyright" and "verifiable".) By extension, we can keep the revised notice relatively brief by using links to refer elsewhere for license text and/or discussion.
-- Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com
I hope so but isn't something that needs to be done before implementation.
2009/6/10 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long
<snip>
Some of this was helpful, thanks. I've responded on the talk page and made some further edits.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
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Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it take to change the licensing? - --Unionhawk
Erik Moeller wrote:
2009/6/10 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long
<snip>
Some of this was helpful, thanks. I've responded on the talk page and made some further edits.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
2009/6/12 Unionhawk unionhawk.sitemod@gmail.com:
Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it take to change the licensing?
More than one to do it correctly. :-)
At 20:05 -0700 12/6/09, Erik Moeller wrote:
2009/6/12 Unionhawk unionhawk.sitemod@gmail.com:
Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it take to change the licensing?
More than one to do it correctly. :-)
Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Is there any compulsion to contact all previous authors/editors/contributors directly?
Gordo
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