On 6/30/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote:
Your disagreement doesn't make a lot of sense to
me. There is no
"special right" inherent in saying "This article was originally written
by members of the Wikipedia community", and it does not preclude anyone
from forking. It is a historical statement that is much more practical
than "This article was written by these 250 people:...", or much more
wiki-like than "This article was originally started by Erik" (as CC-BY
would require).
I strongly support the CC-WIKI license. It is the most practical
solution to the attribution problem. If you're worried about forking
being difficult, then you haven't read the GFDL very carefully, as it is
probably the most forking-unfriendly license there is in the field of
free content.
I am well aware of the terms of the GFDL. Just because I do not agree
with you does not me I do not understand. If you'd like to discuss
anything specifically, please be my guest... I may be able to clear up
any misunderstanding you have related to it.
The important difference you've missed here is that CC-wiki grants
special rights to the originating wiki. As things currently are, the
Wikimedia Foundation has the same obligations under the GFDL as I
would have if I were to make a fork. So if I grabbed the databases,
setup media wiki, and fixed the graphics so that I wasn't walking on
any trademarks my position would be just as legal as the Wikimedia
Foundations position. That's pretty fair and friendly: if I do the
same things I'm all good.
With CC-wiki this wouldn't be the case at all. My fork would be a
second class citizen. Even if all the editors moved to edit on
Gregpedia, people would still need to credit
www.wikipedia.org for the
material.
The content of Wikipedia is not the property of the Wikimedia
Foundation. The content of Wikipedia is the creation and property of
the contributors and thus the community and it was created for the
benefit of the entire world. As such the right and control of our
content must rest in the hands of the community, and creating special
grants for the Foundation removes that control from the community.
I agree that GFDL conformant attribution is an issue in some media
(although I disagree that it is an issue for electronic sources, if
you can mirror the ~2ish GB of text in cur, then you could also manage
the contributor names). These issues can be addressed in ways which
do not create a new form of ownership for the originating wiki's site
operators as the CC-wiki license does.