[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia.org request use of your modified 1913 dictionary definitions

Mr Cassidy, I'm sorry for the late reply but I've been very busy and had to do some asking around to answer some of your questions. On Tuesday 27 August 2002 05:43 am, you wrote: Unfortunately the GNU FDL and the GNU GPL are not compatible but small quotations, particularly if marked as such and cited, ought to be acceptable anyway under fair use (so say a couple of our contributors that are - one of which specializes in IP law). However the version of the modified Webster that I was talking about resides at dict.org and that version's only requirement is that permission is needed by MICRA in order to use more than 1% of the text. In order for us to use the more current GPLd version we would need permission from everybody who has contributed to the modified Webster in order to grant Wikipedia permission to use their work under terms of the GNU FDL. Yeah, I know it is complicated. However, we were just planning on using your "first typing" of the Webster located at Dict.org and didn't even know about a more up-to-date version (I assume that the version on dict.org is entirely your own work under terms of the copyright notice located at: http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict3&Database=web1913 ). Again the difference in copyright licenses will not allow copying like this without permission from copyright owners (it seems odd that the two licenses are not compatible...). Theoretically it would be possible for Wikipedia contributors to grant you permission to use their work under terms of the GNU GPL but due to our development model this is not practical (although we have 200 regular logged-in contributors who would be more than happy to do this, we have thousands of people who have dropped-in and edited articles anonymously and are therefore near impossible to track down). It might be easier to do it the other way around; have your contributors agree to allow Wikipedia to use their work under terms of the GNU FDL. Better yet would be to ask them to re-license their work under terms of the FDL (or compatible license: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#DocumentationLicenses - a dual license may be possible but I have to ask if a FDL/GPL dual license is possible at all). Then the only requirement for either side would be mentioning sources and providing link-backs where appropriate (see: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights ). The GNU FDL is also recommended by Richard Stallman for documentation (see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html ). Wikipedia isn't going to go anywhere -- if I have to I will pay for the bandwidth and hardware to keep it going. But that won't be necessary any time in the forseeable future since Wikipedia is thriving and there are dozens of people who would fork over cash to keep us going if need-be. That would be great! Our development model may scare you at first; we allow anybody to edit any article at any time - without even requiring them to log-in. However, there are always a dozen or so regular contributors watching all recent edits to pages at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges in order to guard against vandalism and copyright violations or for introduced inaccuracies. Believe it or not but this works (any vandal or revisionist quickly gets their "work" reverted into nothingness and if they are persistent they get their IP blocked -- kinda like painting over graffiti as soon as it is put up). Not much has happened with Nupedia in many months. There have been some ideas thrown around for Nupedia (which has very rigid standards) to "validate" Wikipedia articles and then present them in a distribution that can be depended upon by those that don't like Wikipedia's development model. As am I -- sorry again for the late reply. I will have to research this - I've never heard of this project before. Again - the major issue here is copyrights and incompatible licenses. But I'm all for collaboration and have notified our mailing list of these ideas. Wikipedia and Nupedia are currently 100% funded by Jim Wales of Bomis (http://www.jimmywales.com). He provides the bandwidth, pays for the domains and just bought the Wikipedia project a new $3,000 server that is just for Wikipedia (all languages). However we (Wikipedia) plan on forming a non-profit corporation with paying members. Jimbo says that his involvement as benefactor would not change much, if at all, under this scenario though. Therefore any membership dues would probably be used to start sister projects -- such as hosting complete public domain texts that would have links to Wikipedia articles under appropriate terms within the text (a dictionary similarly linked - and cross-linked - would be a grand thing too). Thanks! I joined the project in early January of this year and at that time we had less than 20,000 articles. However we are seriously considering revising our article count -- the "40,000" figure include about 10,000 very short articles that really are little more than definitions or are non-articles that slipped past our current automatic non-article detection mechanisms (for more info see:http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article ). All of our articles are written by volunteers. I do hate duplication of effort too. Thanks again for you time and energy! -- Daniel Mayer My user page is at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric149 ) PS I have CCd this message to our mailing list so if I didn't get something right they will tell me (or maybe even you directly).