On 6/29/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I invite you to ask more questions here as well as on the appropriate candidate talk page if you feel it necessarily.
Well, in my reasoning I thought I was fairly clear that a lot of my motivation was not based on a dislike of any of the candidates, but more because two years is too long and because the editors, myself included, are not being given quite enough information about longer-term issues. I don't think 'questions' are a good solution to the lack of information in the statements because we can not expect a large enough audience to read the discussion.
But since I'm being invited to ask questions, I'd like to ask a question of all of the candidates; please pardon its length. Perhaps this is more directed at Angela, since she mentioned the GFDL in her statement, but I'd like to hear comments from all.
What is your long-term position with respect to the GFDL, particularly with respect to attribution? Specifically, I've read the new CC-wiki license and I'm very concerned that it creates a special right for site operators (as opposed to first editors or publishers). The requirements of the CC-wiki are fairly similar to the not quite GFDL-compatible attribution suggestions we make on our licensing page, which is a big reason why I would even mention CC-wiki when talking about Wikipedia licensing.
Obviously Wikipedia could never be licensed as CC-wiki, and I have great faith that the Free Software Foundation would not make unwise changes to later versions of the GFDL... but I think that we would all benefit from finding out exactly what changes the board would request on our behalf.
I feel confident that the community will not tolerate a change to the licensing which grants Wikimedia special legal rights which would inhibit the ability of the community to fork should the board somehow lose its mind and act against what the community feels is its best interest. This would require that the license not provide a special attribution loophole that allows only attributing to the site where the material was originally created. I would like a direct assurance that the board members will make no attempt to achieve such a change for GFDL-licensed content on Wikipedia, Commons, or Wikibooks.
I'd also like to know how each board member thinks the board to incorporate community input into licensing-related discussions. I believe that most people would agree that the use of our content could be enhanced by some degree of carefully thought out change, but I know I'd like to have the ability to provide input; for example, my point on the non-negotiability of the legal ease of forking.
Thanks!