Wikinews is CC-BY. So I think they will generally pick the best "open content" license that suits the project, with GFDL as the default choice.

Brianna user:pfctdayelise

On 08/11/06, luke brandt shojokid@gmail.com wrote:

Hi, Does the Foundation have any preference for a particular open content license, eg GFDL ? Or is it strictly neutral on this 'legality' I just saw some thought seems to have been given to this question:-

[ Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

ARTICLE I: NAME ...

ARTICLE II: STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the following: Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias, collections of quotations, textbooks and other collections of documents, information, and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such as the Free Documentation License written by the Free Software Foundation Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or similar licensing scheme, see http://www.wikimedia.org. The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects ... ]

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On 11/8/06, luke brandt shojokid@gmail.com wrote:

Hi, Does the Foundation have any preference for a particular open content license, eg GFDL ?

<snip>

I have to say, and perhaps echoing Nicholas' comment, that I continually feel bewildered by what particular licences mean, and how to choose between them. On this very question (ie Luke's), we will possibly continue to debate for a while longer as to what is more appropriate for specific projects and purposes. The debate has just been reopened on the English Wikiversity's Colloquium, for example.

One thing that surprises me is that we have no definitive information (as far as I can see), available *on-wiki*, that details what licences are good for specific purposes (ie types of content, project orientation). Meta is quite bare on this front, it saddens me to say. We have some decent information on the projects, eg en:WP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft and en:WB: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Open_Source (and there may very well be better material on other language projects) - but there is quite little on actually answering the questions that many of us are likely to have (eg "What does the GFDL really mean?; "How do I know what licence to use?"; and "What would be the advantages and disadvantages of changing the licence for our project?").

This prompts me to propose that we make that space, that we provide this info, and support this debate (without having to trawl through the archives of this list again, or continually bring up the same subject). The recent discussion on Wikiversity prompted me to set up a page on Wikiversity where we could collate some good, thorough info and also to provide for actual learning about the subject: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Free_content. It would be lovely if this was to develop into a space for the Wikimedia community - a learning community around free content and licencing. There is hardly anything there for the moment - pure potential - but it is ripe for use. And please note that I am not asking that this discussion and all other information move wholesale to that page - but rather that we strengthen and deepen this information and discussion with content across all projects, for all curious contributors, present and future.

Thanks,

Cormac