A couple of comments regarding the recent GFDL debate:
0) The rendering of the GFDL at
http://www.wikipedia.com/license/index.html sucks rocks. Several
@acronym's are still there, and the numbering is incorrect
(Preamble should be 0, the MODIFICATIONS section, when refering to
sections 2 and 3, means in fact sections 3 and 4.) It would be best
to simply link to the FSF's version at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft.fdl.html. In the sequel, I will use the
correct section numbers from FSF.
1) It is interesting to learn that every Wikipedia article is
considered to be a separate GFDL'd work. This should be stated
somewhere. It has real consequences.
2) Among them: the title of every article has to be changed if the
article is changed (5.1). To get around this, we would need some
note on the submit page, stating that the submitter permits
to retain the article's title even if the text is changed.
3) To use the GFDL, the license text has to be part of the document. A
link at the top (after the title) would probably be sufficient.
This is missing right now. Furthermore, this notice has to state
the invariant section title (for the link back that you want to
require) and cover texts (which I assume we don't care about).
4) The five most significant authors (at least) have to be maintained
in perpetuity (5.2)
5) I have no legal opinion about whether it is permissable to require
exact layout, down to the colors, of an invariant section. But I
would like it a lot better if we could relax and tone down our invariant
section requirement a bit, maybe like this:
"At prominent position, mention that this material originated at
Wikipedia.com, the free collaborative encyclopedia, and provide a
link back to Wikipedia's original article. Here is a suggested
HTML table to do so:..."
Imagine I want to put together a website for a class I'm teaching,
and use materials from Wikipedia. This fat table on every page?
Please.
Axel