I agree with this point entirely. The average contributor couldn't care less about the license, and it's my experience that licensing in general has done more to hinder contributions then it has to secure them. Or, at the very least, the hindrances are more apparent then the securities are. Besides a few GFDL ideologists, most contributors wouldn't care at all if we switched licenses, and many would welcome the freedom of a less restrictive licensing scheme. This is certainly the case on wikibooks where many book donations have been slowed or even canceled because of licensing problems. I would venture to guess that most of the problems associated with such a license switch would come externally, not internally. --Andrew Whitworth

On Nov 21, 2007 5:59 PM, Robert Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: If the next generation of GFDL were something along the lines of CC-BY-SA-2.5, would that be an acceptable future evolution from your perspective? that may not be worth much) the concerns boil down to: 1. GFDL is viral (*-SA-* is as well) 2. GFDL is large and clunky 3. GFDL is insufficiently flexible about the license inclusion on electronically redistributed content, from a modern perspective 4. GFDL is structurally a poor match for oft-changed content (primary authors, change logs/edit histories, etc... i.e any Wiki content). 5. GFDL hasn't been translated. I know quite a few people who care about the license being viral, who either exclusively use CC-SA type licenses or GFDL. I know others who would be perfectly happy if that went away leaving us with more of a CC-BY type license. I personally am comfortable without viral, but I agree that imposing that on people who implicitly or explicitly bought in with that assumption as part of their internal prioritization of why to use / like GFDL is likely unfair and controversial and drama-inducing. I don't know of anyone to date who's objected to structural improvements along the lines of fixing 2-5, or making those aspects more like CC-BY-SA licenses. If you object to fixes to 2-5 then please explain your concerns in enough detail that they can be carried to the update discussions which are going on. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

i would support such a move 2007/11/22, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com>om>:

George Herbert wrote: Perhaps this may not be the case, but from my perspective my little $0.02 added to the discussion is not going to make even a single bit of difference to any changes to the GFDL. Basically, I don't think "the powers that be" really care even a little bit what my opinion on the matter really is, nor are they willing to accept my opinions on the topic. Especially to make any meaningful influence on the next version of the GFDL. I'm not saying this to be making a statement here, but there are some rather powerful political interests here that are trying to make changes to the GFDL, and are willing to throw money around to see that they happen. And unfortunately money talks. I have a number of problems with the Creative Commons suite of licenses, not the least of which is the fact that nearly every time I get into a disucssion about them, I get trashed on the forums for misquoting which license I'm talking about, even when it is something minor like understanding the difference between CC-by-SA and CC-SA, or any other variant. At least when I use the term GFDL, it is not ambiguous about what license I'm talking about. And the spectrum seems to shift so much not only on each variation of each CC license but that each variation has gone through several revisions....which I really don't have time to sort through the subtle details of them either. In this regard, I pray to the license gods (RMS would get a kick out of this) that they don't have the GFDL follow the pattern of the CC licenses.... as unfortunately it appears that the FSF is doing right now with things like the AGPL. That there are some problems with the GFDL, I don't dispute. And I hope that some of them do get fixed. Of the problems with the GFDL that you note, the only one that I see as a real serious problem is the lengthy text that must be included when you distribute GFDL content. For books this generally isn't a problem (and I've make a couple of dead-tree versions of GFDL'd content for redistribution myself), but the problem comes when people want to do more than a book, or use only a much smaller excerpt. This is a real problem. The issue with dealing with the GFDL and Wikis is not so much the fact that it is electronic media, but the fact that unlike traditional publishing most Wiki-based content has several orders of magnitude more contributors than you would ever have in a traditional book publishing environment. Even more than you would find in a more traditional complied content format like a newspaper or news magazine. The MPAA only recognizes 4 authors (screenplay writers) for on-screen credits, to show an example of another medium that is not electronic (or doesn't have to be) that also has problems with trying to decide "authorship" when there are large numbers of collaborators working on a single document. BTW, there are people in the motion picture industry that are not pleased with this rule either. Legal frameworks of any kind have not really been developed to cope with a typical Wiki format, nor have I even seen any constructive discussions that have covered identifying authorship of a Wikipedia article, beyond doing things like edit counts. Usually the "authorship" is simply attributed to the WMF.... which is clearly not the case. -- Robert Horning

On Nov 21, 2007 6:35 PM, Tim 'avatar' Bartel &lt;wikipedia(a)computerkultur.org&gt; wrote: Same in France. I believe the rationale is that you simply can't agree to a contract you've never seen and I must say that I find it actually makes sense. <devil's advocate> What if the FSF decided that the next version of the GFDL stipulates "As of now, all works under the GFDL are sole propriety of the FSF"? What would be the recourse of the authors who have agreed to "any later versions"?</devil's advocate> Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will get lost. Please use my wikimedia.org address.

On Nov 21, 2007 6:50 PM, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: [NB: I'm writing this question just out of the blue, without prior research]: Following up on Delphine's point: Let's imagine that the FSF decides that the new GFDL basically says "All GFDL works are to be treated as if they were in the public domain" (= All GFDL works are equal to PD works). Let's further imagine that the majority of Wikipedia contributors likes this approach and Wikipedia adopts the new GFDL version. Wouldn't this mean that the contributions of prior contributors would then also be available under these new, similar-to-PD terms and, if yes, wouldn't this possibly violate the spirit of the contributor's decision (viz. to submit them under GFDL terms and not anything less restrictive?) Michael

David Gerard ha scritto: Well, I've seen someone licensing media on commons with a double licence GFDL + cc-by-sa-nc. The only reason I can see is exploiting the GFDL clause of including the license in the copies, which in many cases is simply unpractical, particularly for an image. I can envisage these contributors will have a reason to complain if the GFDL becomes less restrictive. Cruccone

On Nov 21, 2007 6:50 PM, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: I'm trying to think this out as I type. Ahhh, right, I forgot about "you don't take away the previous license" part. :-) But I believe your argument is flawed. New licenses can with as little effectiveness take away or add restrictions. In the end, if the clause "and any later version" is non-valid, then the whole adding or taking away is non-valid (see Michael B.'s point on taking away restrictions in the next email). So I agree that my work is still under the license I chose to start with, but in France, or Germany, I would probably have a case if I said that I wanted my content to be taken away from a website which by default adopted both licenses (the older and the newer one). This does leave the question of the recourse I have if some_evil_person decides to use the content I produced under the new license and thus bar it from further modifications or on the contrary gets rid of all restrictions. Doesn't it? I mean my work is then spread out there under conditions I might not agree to. As David Gerard puts it though, it's all small talk until someone goes to court and wins. Interesting nonetheless. Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will get lost. Please use my wikimedia.org address.

David Gerard wrote: One of the reasons to be deeply concerned about the GFDL is precisely that it is not "ported" to multiple jurisdictions in the way that CC licenses are. (Indeed, it is not even officially translated.) --Jimbo

On Nov 21, 2007 10:54 AM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 1.2 or any later version. Anyone can exercise those "or later" rights, not just the WMF. Of course, it is the FSF that decides what those later versions will say. The most that the WMF/Wikipedia could do is decide to adjust the license on future submissions, i.e. switching to "GFDL 2.0 or later versions" or adopting a more restrictive stance like "GFDL 1.2 only". -Robert Rohde

On 21/11/2007, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Indeed. If someone objected to the later relicensing, their comeback would be to sue for copyright violation. And the defender could say "well, you licensed it under 'GFDL 1.2 or later' - if you didn't mean 'or later' when you clicked 'submit', why did you click it?" - d.

On 22/11/2007, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: The original statute of Anne would have little problem with the Internet since it only applies to written work on paper. The GFDL as written would be ineffectual since it doesn't require witnesses. It would also run into problems when works were translated: VII.Provided, That nothing in this act contained, do extend, or shall be construed to extend to prohibit the importation, vending, or selling of any books in Greek, Latin, or any other foreign language printed beyond the seas; any thing in this act contained to the contrary notwithstanding. The act also places limits on how much you could charge but that would unlikely to be a problem. -- geni

On 22/11/2007, GerardM &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne If your country was ever run by an bunch of upper class English twits your copyright system can probably be ultimately traced back to that act. Napoleon in between conquering those bits of Europe not run by English upper class twits reformed the legal system and it from that legal system that most of the other copyright systems around come from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright Focuses overmuch on the common law system but is a start. -- geni

Delphine Ménard wrote: To an extent the GFDL recognizes this: Thus if I submitted at a time when an earlier version of the licence prevailed I can still claim the benefits of that earlier licence. Ec

On Nov 21, 2007 9:50 AM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: For the record, does anyone know if there is case law legitimizing "or later versions" in the US? I suspect there is nothing obviously against it here (or the FSF and such wouldn't be using the phrase at all), but is there an affirmative precedent to show it is okay? -Robert Rohde

Robert Horning wrote: Some of us would consider the viral nature as the most enlightened feature of the licence. Ec