The CC-BY-SA license was certainly available -- it's one of the core CC
licenses, and has been since the start.
The main reason Wikipedia had changes is, I believe, that the GFDL is simply
a bad license for a wiki: the GFDL requires individual authors to be listed,
and has other restrictions that make content reuse a bit cumbersome.
Secondarily, there was the incompatibility with various other copyleft
sources that are using the CC-BY-SA type licenses.
Now, Wikinews is not using a copyleft license: CC-BY is _less_ restrictive
than CC-BY-SA, and was chosen to be so on purpose. Our license allows much
easier reuse of our content by commercial and non-commercial sources, with
or without changes, as long as it's attributed back to us. The CC-BY-SA
license, however, requires that if any changes are made in downstream reuse
of content, the changed content is made available under a similar license.
This, by definition, is more restrictive than just a plain attribution
requirement. And this is the reason why Wikipedia content can't be copied to
Wikinews: we are not able to offer the guarantee that downstream reuse of
Wikinews content will follow CC-BY-SA.
You can see the original discussion / voting at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License
-ilya
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>wrote;wrote:
Commons is the most compelling project to be
compatible with. If you
actually look into the details of CC-BY-SA it is the license Wikinews would
probably have chosen were it available at the time. CC-BY-SA makes
Wikipedia
content vastly more useful to a lot of places and clears up significant
potential fair use issues quoting content on non-CC-BY-SA sites.
Remember, Wikipedia ended up GFDL as a historical accident. They've worked
from that - including strongarming 'The Bearded One' - into writing a
get-out-of-GFDL clause. CC-BY-SA is *currently* the best choice for the WMF
mission. I don't think it was available when Wikinews went from PD to
CC-BY.
Brian.
-----Original Message-----
From: wikinews-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikinews-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jason
Safoutin
Sent: 30 May 2009 16:26
To: Wikinews mailing list
Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikipedia's 'In the news'
Why though? Then what purpose does it serve to have changed WP to
CC-BY-SA if it still prevents copying from WP to WN or the likes? In
that sense, it really makes no logical sense. I thought the goal was to
make the WP license more compatible with other project licenses? If so
then changing it to CC-BY-SA isn't doing that at all (aside from commons).
--
Jason Safoutin
Wikinews accredited reporter and administrator
jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org
Paul Williams wrote:
2009/5/30 Jason Safoutin
<jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org
<mailto:jason.safoutin@wikinewsie.org>>
Why could we not copy from WP? SA is just the basic same as regular
CC
BY. If copying from WP will still not be
allowed, then why did they
go
through the trouble to even change the
license if its still not
compatible with other projects?
CC-BY is not the same as CC-BY-SA - we (Wikinews) must publish our
content under CC-BY-SA if we wish to copy from WP.
Regards,
Paul Williams
paul(a)skenmy.com <mailto:paul@skenmy.com>
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Jason Safoutin
Wikinews accredited reporter and administrator
jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org
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