Silly question time. Just because a project, say, decides to migrate from one license type to another, how can the project forcefully reassign the older contributions under the new license? I'm familiar with the GFDL and CC-BY-SA, but suppose someone (who is a stick-in-the-mud true believer of the GFDL, for instance?) insists that their contributions are only licensed under the GFDL and not a similar but less restrictive CC license?
What about all the contributors (aka copyright holders for Wikipedia's content) who either disagree with such a move, or those who simply never give consent to the changeover?
I'm hoping I'm missing something.
~ Kylu
As far as I can understand, the main problem we have with the GFDL is
that
you have to include the entire text of the license if you want to use something that is GFDL. Why not, in the next GFDL version, just
remove the
clause that says you have to include the entire license, and just say
it's
sufficient to state that the material is GFDL and credit the
author(s) in
the appropriate manner? Wouldn't that - for the everyday person -
accomplish
exactly the same as switching to CC-by-SA?
A bit of a follow-up to this question: If the FSF modifies the GFDL to be compatible with CC-BY-SA, wouldn't that negate the need to migrate from one to the other? If the two licenses were fully-compatible to the point that migration was possible, wouldn't we already be getting everything we want out of the GFDL anyway? If the GFDL is modified to suit our needs as well as the CC-BY-SA does, why is there a need to migrate?
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From what I understood, we wont move to CC-BY-SA license, the GFDL will be
upgraded to a new version whch is more similar to CC-BY-SA
2007/12/5, Lilewyn lilewyn@yahoo.ca:
Silly question time. Just because a project, say, decides to migrate from one license type to another, how can the project forcefully reassign the older contributions under the new license? I'm familiar with the GFDL and CC-BY-SA, but suppose someone (who is a stick-in-the-mud true believer of the GFDL, for instance?) insists that their contributions are only licensed under the GFDL and not a similar but less restrictive CC license?
What about all the contributors (aka copyright holders for Wikipedia's content) who either disagree with such a move, or those who simply never give consent to the changeover?
I'm hoping I'm missing something.
~ Kylu
As far as I can understand, the main problem we have with the GFDL is
that
you have to include the entire text of the license if you want to use something that is GFDL. Why not, in the next GFDL version, just
remove the
clause that says you have to include the entire license, and just say
it's
sufficient to state that the material is GFDL and credit the
author(s) in
the appropriate manner? Wouldn't that - for the everyday person -
accomplish
exactly the same as switching to CC-by-SA?
A bit of a follow-up to this question: If the FSF modifies the GFDL to be compatible with CC-BY-SA, wouldn't that negate the need to migrate from one to the other? If the two licenses were fully-compatible to the point that migration was possible, wouldn't we already be getting everything we want out of the GFDL anyway? If the GFDL is modified to suit our needs as well as the CC-BY-SA does, why is there a need to migrate?
Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go toYahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com
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On 05/12/2007, Lilewyn lilewyn@yahoo.ca wrote:
Silly question time. Just because a project, say, decides to migrate from one license type to another, how can the project forcefully reassign the older contributions under the new license? I'm familiar with the GFDL and CC-BY-SA, but suppose someone (who is a stick-in-the-mud true believer of the GFDL, for instance?) insists that their contributions are only licensed under the GFDL and not a similar but less restrictive CC license? What about all the contributors (aka copyright holders for Wikipedia's content) who either disagree with such a move, or those who simply never give consent to the changeover? I'm hoping I'm missing something.
"or later"
Each time you press "submit", you're contributing your text under GFDL 1.2 *or later*.
What WMF has done is formally ask the FSF to come up with a new official version of the GFDL that is compatible or identical with a present or future version of CC-by-sa. So the new licence text would be an already-agreed-to-licence for the GFDL 1.2 or later contributions.
- d.
But could removing the requirement to include the text of the license in a future version of the GFDL be a violation of the "spirit" of the license? Who decides what the spirit is anyway?
"Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns."
Some people agree to release images under the GFDL since they know newspapers\books are unlikely to use them without contacting them first and working something out, so essentially people use it as a semi-noncommercial license. Those people would probably argue a new version would not be in the same spirit.
On Dec 5, 2007 10:30 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/12/2007, Lilewyn lilewyn@yahoo.ca wrote:
Silly question time. Just because a project, say, decides to migrate from one license type to another, how can the project forcefully
reassign
the older contributions under the new license? I'm familiar with the
GFDL
and CC-BY-SA, but suppose someone (who is a stick-in-the-mud true believer of the GFDL, for instance?) insists that their contributions
are
only licensed under the GFDL and not a similar but less restrictive CC
license?
What about all the contributors (aka copyright holders for Wikipedia's
content)
who either disagree with such a move, or those who simply never give
consent
to the changeover? I'm hoping I'm missing something.
"or later"
Each time you press "submit", you're contributing your text under GFDL 1.2 *or later*.
What WMF has done is formally ask the FSF to come up with a new official version of the GFDL that is compatible or identical with a present or future version of CC-by-sa. So the new licence text would be an already-agreed-to-licence for the GFDL 1.2 or later contributions.
- d.
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