Well, I think many people, including I, want to see GFDL changed and/or
becoming compatible with CC-by-sa. The reason is just as you cited: We are
stuck with it.
But such a change might take a long time (it has been already taking for a
long time), while somewhat questionable practices (copying and pasting of
texts or images without preserving history) are happening day by day. And
that is where a quick temporary fix like the introduction of the PD license
can help. Probably I was not clear on this, but it is not contradictory to
the change to GFDL, (or drafting of GFCL) as I understand.
Also, if you are concerned about the importing of GFDL'd contents from
outside sources, the PD license could specify that contents in the article,
image, and media namespaces are not dual-licensed, but simply GFDL'd. But
then, again, we are doing something questionable when we translate an
article containing such a text from one language to another without
preserving its history.
Like I suggested in the other email, it seems that the American Wikipedans
are reasonably safe. Court may find, even in case a lawsuit happens for some
reasons, not preserving history here and there is not a problem. And maybe
other en. Wikipedians are as safe (or maybe not. That part is something I
really don't know). So I am not urging that en. should adopt such a license.
But like I said, the license has its own benefits, both for en. wikipedians
and potentially for others who copy contents (text or image) from en.
without preserving history.
Regards,
Tomos
From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com>
To: foundation-l(a)Wikimedia.org
CC: wiki_tomos(a)hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL
source?
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 12:56:27 -0700 (PDT)
--- Tomos at Wikipedia <wiki_tomos(a)hotmail.com>
wrote on WikiEN-l:
Mav, you are right in that the effect is limited
because we cannot
retroactively apply the second license to past edits. But if we consider
the
effect, it seems it is still better to introduce
it than not, and we
would
do just as Electicology suggested:
Sorry, it is simply not possible to create a derivative dual licensed work
from
a GFDL-only licensed article. Doing so would be a violation of the
copyright of
everyone who submitted the GFDL-only text. Dual licensing would also make
it
impossible to accept any new GFDL-only text.
We are stuck with the GFDL as is until the FSF makes changes to that
license.
Let's concentrate on improving the license we have - Jimmy has already
stated
that the FSF and CC people are interested in this type of thing.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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