Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
That site actually reserves the right to distribute the material in any form, including for example on paper, smartphones or on PDAs (since the site is down I'm citing that from google cache). That makes a weblink to Wikipedia practically useless. In addion, Flexikon states "so dass Sie keine Inhalte einstellen dürfen, wenn Sie später eigene Rechte geltend machen wollen" (You may not upload content, if you want to claim rights on the text later). That's not true, putting a text under GNU FDL does not mean, *losing* ones rights on the text. What makes me especially angry is DocCheck/Flexikon putting a "(c) 2002 by DocCheck Medical Services GmbH" under each article page, and refering to the GNU FDL just on one general "usage" page. It all looks like a de facto re-closing of open content.
I would agree with you, given the totality of these facts. But in the past, we have had very good success with just writing a kind letter asking people to do the right thing.
I agree with everyone thinking the GNU FDL is completely unsuitable for Wikipedia. We act against this license a hundred times a day moving content from one article to another, translating from english to german and just stating there "aus en:".
I'm not convinced that any of that amounts to even a technical violation of the license, properly interpreted.
It's a fact that the license is at it is. We should have choosen a better one in the first place, but now we have the GNU FDL and it's likely that we have to live with her. The only way for having any changes would be a nother version of the license released by the GNU Foundation.
I believe this to be a possibility. Richard Stallman has indicated to me that he would look favorably on a "lesser FDL", similar to the "LGPL" or "Lesser GPL", if it is free and serves people's needs better. It's really just a matter of us doing the hard work to design that license and campaign for it to be adopted.
But the license does not allow for hijacking of the material: If one is going to use the material in a commercial context, we should insist on our rights to keep the content free, to have any derived work free again and to have mentioned our effort in developing that content.
Yes, I agree with you.
Have you heard back from the offending site? What's their story?
--Jimbo