The international language editions of Wikinews are still in beta, but some of the other language version have already moved one step closer to getting out of that state - they got a license. Now... This is not a good thing.
The Spanish, Serbian and Romanian editions are all licensed under the GNU FDL, and the Japanese edition is licensed under CC-By. That's due to the nature of the Japanese law, which, according to some juristic analysis, doesn't allow to release content into the public domain. That's not such a big problem - first of all, it might be possible to relicense the content under CC-By-SA, or simply ask the contributors to relicense it - since this is a new project, there aren't too many people to ask.
But, back to the topic. The 2.5 Creative Commons licenses allow to give the attribution NOT to every author of the article, but to the whole project - just check 4(b) of http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode (same applies to every other CC license).
This allows us to finally license our content under the CC-Wiki (that's what we could call CC-By-SA 2.5) license - now the basic questions are:
1) Do we need to license it right now? 2) Will we really choose CC-By-SA 2.5, or some other license, like GFDL or CC-By, for example? 3) What should we do about the Wikinews projects which already have a license choosed?
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only group which can choose a license, and what I understood was they would like the project as a whole to select a license which is most compatible with the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
As to the suggested license, CC-by-sa, the primary argument against that license in previous versions was the requirement for attribution to all contributors by downstream content reusers. If version 2.5 allows attribution to the originating project then I see no reason not to adopt that license.
So to answer your questions:
- Do we need to license it right now?
Yes, the longer we wait the more content there is to relicense, and the larger the likelihood of argument and dispute over relicensing.
- Will we really choose CC-By-SA 2.5, or some other license, like
GFDL or CC-By, for example?
As far as I am concerned, the CC-by-sa 2.5 appears to answer all the previously-raised concerns and has the added benefit of an active community developing and maintaining the licensure.
- What should we do about the Wikinews projects which already have a
license choosed?
It should be gently pointed out to them that it is not something they can actually do, and ask them to bring their input to this discussion? I'm not sure how to bring it up without causing some level of conflict, but they might be asked how they decided they *could* change the license without asking the Foundation.
Amgine
unsubscrube
On 8/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only group which can choose a license, and what I understood was they would like the project as a whole to select a license which is most compatible with the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
As to the suggested license, CC-by-sa, the primary argument against that license in previous versions was the requirement for attribution to all contributors by downstream content reusers. If version 2.5 allows attribution to the originating project then I see no reason not to adopt that license.
So to answer your questions:
- Do we need to license it right now?
Yes, the longer we wait the more content there is to relicense, and the larger the likelihood of argument and dispute over relicensing.
- Will we really choose CC-By-SA 2.5, or some other license, like
GFDL or CC-By, for example?
As far as I am concerned, the CC-by-sa 2.5 appears to answer all the previously-raised concerns and has the added benefit of an active community developing and maintaining the licensure.
- What should we do about the Wikinews projects which already have a
license choosed?
It should be gently pointed out to them that it is not something they can actually do, and ask them to bring their input to this discussion? I'm not sure how to bring it up without causing some level of conflict, but they might be asked how they decided they *could* change the license without asking the Foundation.
Amgine _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
On 8/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only group which can choose a license, and what I understood was they would like the project as a whole to select a license which is most compatible with the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
Yes, but Jimbo wanted to hear everyone's opinion on this topic. As to the questions I raised, I too think that CC-By-SA will be the best, and we need to relicense the content ASAP.
In the case of the Spanish Wikinews, I don't think there was a choice of licence. By some reason, it was created with the GFDL licence and we notice that we had a different licence several months after the Creation. I don't think we want to stick to a specific licence. We will prefer to use the same licence that the other Wikinews projects.
Ascánder
On 8/3/05, Dariusz Siedlecki datrio@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only group which
can
choose a license, and what I understood was they would like the
project
as a whole to select a license which is most compatible with the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
Yes, but Jimbo wanted to hear everyone's opinion on this topic. As to the questions I raised, I too think that CC-By-SA will be the best, and we need to relicense the content ASAP.
-- Best regards, Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Uh - you can't "re-license" public domain property. Once it's public domain - it's always public domain.
-- David Speakman http://www.DavidSpeakman.com 501 Moorpark Way #83 Mountain View CA 94041 Phone: 408-382-1459
-----Original Message----- From: wikinews-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikinews-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dariusz Siedlecki Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 12:17 PM To: Wikinews mailing list Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Licensing Wikinews
On 8/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only
group which
can choose a license, and what I understood was they
would like the
project as a whole to select a license which is most
compatible with
the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
Yes, but Jimbo wanted to hear everyone's opinion on this topic. As to the questions I raised, I too think that CC-By-SA will be the best, and we need to relicense the content ASAP.
-- Best regards, Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
David Speakman wrote:
Uh - you can't "re-license" public domain property. Once it's public domain
- it's always public domain.
-- David Speakman
<grin> Presuming it has adequately been licensed as PD, a point Mr. Lessig feels Wikinews has not done. But I understand your point; we would need to mark all current articles as licensed under PD - a fair amount of work for someone(s) and more the longer we delay.
Amgine
Am i just dreaming, or was there origanaly a concensus that we would be moving toward cc-by rather than cc-by-sa? I remeber arguments about trying to encourage ppl to reuse our stuff and whatnot...
paz y amor, -rjs.
On 8/4/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
David Speakman wrote:
Uh - you can't "re-license" public domain property. Once it's public
domain
- it's always public domain.
-- David Speakman
<grin> Presuming it has adequately been licensed as PD, a point Mr. Lessig feels Wikinews has not done. But I understand your point; we would need to mark all current articles as licensed under PD - a fair amount of work for someone(s) and more the longer we delay.
Amgine _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Robin Shannon wrote:
Am i just dreaming, or was there origanaly a concensus that we would be moving toward cc-by rather than cc-by-sa? I remeber arguments about trying to encourage ppl to reuse our stuff and whatnot...
paz y amor, -rjs.
I think you're right. I'll look in the wikinews-l archives for the earlier discussions.
Amgine
I actually really like the fact that we are public domain. :) It allows us to freely distribute our content, and we are covered legally as long as we acknowledge when we use fair use or other copyrighted work (government public domain documents do it all the time). I think the licensing mixups about the other language editions could be related to the fact that when a new MediaWiki is set up, it automatically defaults to GNU-FDL. So, in summary: I think we should keep Wikinews in the public domain.
Maybe we should. But I like the idea of CC-Wiki... but then again due to current fact that we would have to change all current public domain pages to include a notice that they're public domain.
On 8/5/05, Nicholas Gerda ngerda@gmail.com wrote:
I actually really like the fact that we are public domain. :) It allows us to freely distribute our content, and we are covered legally as long as we acknowledge when we use fair use or other copyrighted work (government public domain documents do it all the time). I think the licensing mixups about the other language editions could be related to the fact that when a new MediaWiki is set up, it automatically defaults to GNU-FDL. So, in summary: I think we should keep Wikinews in the public domain. _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
unsubscribe
On 8/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
As far as I am aware, it is not possible for any of the Wikinews editions to choose a license. The WMF Board is the only group which can choose a license, and what I understood was they would like the project as a whole to select a license which is most compatible with the goals of the entire project, not any single edition.
As to the suggested license, CC-by-sa, the primary argument against that license in previous versions was the requirement for attribution to all contributors by downstream content reusers. If version 2.5 allows attribution to the originating project then I see no reason not to adopt that license.
So to answer your questions:
- Do we need to license it right now?
Yes, the longer we wait the more content there is to relicense, and the larger the likelihood of argument and dispute over relicensing.
- Will we really choose CC-By-SA 2.5, or some other license, like
GFDL or CC-By, for example?
As far as I am concerned, the CC-by-sa 2.5 appears to answer all the previously-raised concerns and has the added benefit of an active community developing and maintaining the licensure.
- What should we do about the Wikinews projects which already have a
license choosed?
It should be gently pointed out to them that it is not something they can actually do, and ask them to bring their input to this discussion? I'm not sure how to bring it up without causing some level of conflict, but they might be asked how they decided they *could* change the license without asking the Foundation.
Amgine _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org