(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Thanks. So just to be clear, does that mean it's still technically illegal to copy an article from Wikipedia and republish it under CC-BY-SA?
Correct.
But once an FDL version is released that's compatible with CC-BY-SA, it'll no longer be illegal?
I think that's the plan. We'll have to wait and see.
(So, for people to start copying Wikipedia content to Knol, presumably two things would have to happen -- Knol would have to allow CC-BY-SA as a publishing option, and FDL would have to be revised to be CC-BY-SA-compatible.)
In addition to that, they would need to remove the requirement from their terms of service that people give Google a much wider ranging license.
Since it was announced in December 2007 that they planned to make the FDL compatible with CC-BY-SA, does that mean they're still working on it? Are their pro bono lawyers just really careful with things like this, so they usually take a long time before coming out with a new version of FDL that meets a specific goal?
As far as I know, they're still working on it. I haven't heard anything about it recently.