Thanks Magnus for this proposal. I would like to see a link to the FSF GFDL included as well. If you include that in your proposition I would second it. Hannes Hirzel On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Magnus Manske wrote:

Laura T. wrote: We are releasing the content of the Wikipedia under an open license, the GNU FDL. We have not previously been clear enough about exactly how people who want to copy our material are expected to behave. We are trying to clarify this. Nupedia was started first, and is extremely high quality in the limited content that it does produce. After a year or so of working on Nupedia, Larry had the idea to use Wiki software for a separate project specifically for people like you (and me!) who are intimidated and bored (sorry, Nupedia!) with the tedium of the process. As it turns out, Wikipedia is dramatically more successful on some measures, and Nupedia is dramatically more successful on some other measures. It is my personal expectation that in the future, Nupedia will end up using (somehow) content from Wikipedia as a foundation for an "academically respectable" project. The main thing about Wikipedia is that it is fun and addictive. :-) Indeed, it is a good thing, then. -- ************************************************* * http://www.wikipedia.com/ * * You can edit this page right now! * *************************************************

"Laura T." &lt;ldb64(a)midwest.net&gt; writes: FWIW, the Free Software Foundation has this to say about the Open Directory License (from <URL:http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html>): This is not a free documentation license. The primary problems are that your right to redistribute any given version is not permanent and that it requires the user to keep checking back at that site, which is too restrictive of the user's freedom. -- Robbe

On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 06:58:45PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote: Absolutely. Require that text at the bottom of each page, then? If I decide I want to do something slightly different, can I approach you with my proposal? I suggest you state in the copyright and GFDL implementation text that you can be approached for special situations. No general solution is going to work for everyone. Does Bomis hold official copyright on Wikipedia? I didn't see it on the site. You really should post a copyright notice on the main page, directly, which includes the implementation of the license in it. I am concerned that you run into a violation of the *spirit* of the GFDL, if not the precise letter, if you require some large or intrusive attribution on derivative works that doesn't exist on the live Wikipedia pages. In my case especially, since it isn't really a `derivative work' but just a downstream packaging of Wikipedia content, as it were. Hopefully, given my track record of unpaid volunteer work for the Linux Documentation Project, and now some fair amount of unpaid volunteer work for the Wikipedia, you know that I'm not a money grubber who is trying to take advantage of Wikipedia or Bomis. I want to see you get fair attribution. My goals, in large part, are your goals. I want you to succeed. However, I also want the maximum flexibility in how I attribute you, within reasonable parameters of course. Your suggestion here sounds like something I can live with. I've also decided definitely that all Wikipedia content that is packaged beside the LDP documents in Linux distributions will contain a live linkback to directly edit the page. That could easily bring a million Linux users to Wikipedia every month. More if you count the local page views. That is a good thing for Wikipedia and for Linux. Please give me your views or guidelines on how I might approach this effort. My goal is to start having Wikipedia content used as part of Linux help, but I don't want to move the LDP over wholesale (and it would be rude to my authors, even those who GFDL'ed), nor do I want to simply leech. I'm just knocking around ideas right now, so if you can suggest any I should consider I'd appreciate hearing them. I will be formatting the output differently from Wikipedia, though. I will make the output look as similar as I can to the other documents. I have to merge man pages, html, and docbook documents, and it is a challenge to make the presentation of all those documents seamless across format, but that's what I'm trying to do. I want the transition to and from Wikipedia pages within the Linux documentation database to be similarly seamless. I'll attribute Wikipedia pages, and probably put up a logo for graphical browser users. I will run the final stylesheets past you once I get to that point. Live release in actual Linux distributions is probably six months away, so there is no hurry. I promise to be very amenable to following your suggestions, as long as you keep in mind that the user experience comes first in my page layout philosophy! Thanks for resolving this issue quickly. It really is fundamental and the sooner you resolve it, the better for everyone. Then it becomes a non-issue and we can all get back to work where we should be. :-) Regards, -- Dr. David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net Linux Documentation Project david(a)lupercalia.net Collection Editor & Coordinator http://www.linuxdoc.org We turn the wheel to welcome her Every breath is sacred Opening, we welcome her Every breath is sacred As we walk this ancient path Every breath is sacred We are stronger than we know Every breath is sacred -- The Midwife's Song, Calla Unsworth

Larry Sanger wrote: I'm afraid we don't have an official position on that. :-( Plausible arguments have been made that the copyright rests with the original authors, and that Bomis/Wikipedia stands in the position of redistributor. Big picture, the primary advantage to this for contributors might be that Bomis can't _also release_ the content under a proprietary license. The owner of content which has been placed under a free license can't ever "get it back", but can produce a derivative work which is then distributed under a proprietary license. This would be in addition to the existing free version. I assume that would be undesirable for our contributors, who surely would be unhappy at such a development. On the other hand, if the community decided someday that we wish the content were under a different license, a different *free* license, for some reason, then we'd have a hard time changing, even to another free license, because all of the past contributors haven't given us any right to do that. The primary *disadvantage* to Bomis NOT owning copyright on the articles is standing in case of a lawsuit. I consider one of my jobs as trustee of the project is to sue the hell out of Microsoft or whoever if they try to do something unfree with the content. I'll have a harder time doing that if I'm not owner of the copyright, and lots of individual owners might be hard to organize into a coherent legal strategy. Another major disadvantage (potentially) to our current "wide open" situation, is that third parties like Yahoo who want to legitimately use the content, under an open license, may be concerned that I can't point to anything or anyone as the definitive copyright owner, unless it is me. All this stuff makes my head hurt, I must admit. I just want to make a free encyclopedia. -- ********************************************************************* *"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its* * own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but * * there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be * * pursuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can * * certainly be corrected by good men with rifles." -Jeff Cooper * ********************************************************************

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Magnus Manske wrote: The main problem I can see with a button is that many people wouldn't know what it would mean, if that's *all* that were included--that is, they wouldn't know that it's a link back to Wikipedia, which defeats the purpose of the linkback.

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Michel Clasquin wrote: Why? I want to beat Britannica in terms of quantity and quality, and I think we can do it, given enough time. I want this because I think Britannica is a great encyclopedia, and if we actually do better, we will have achieved something truly extraordinary. It's a goal, stated in terms of a known product. If I understand you correctly, your point is that we should not limit ourselves by conceiving of our project as *just* following the traditional model of an encyclopedia. With that I fully agree. I probably spend more time "outside the box" than in it, and that probably goes for a lot of people at work on the project. There are many ways in which Wikipedia can be expanded. But I do believe that we should do everything Britannica has done at least as well as Britannica has done it, and that is a fine goal for us to have for now. I also think that, in these early stages, it is essential that we do focus on the task of building an encyclopedia, rather than starting many new different kinds of projects that could enhance the encyclopedia. First we've got to have something really great to enhance, I think. (This isn't to say that the 9/11 pages are unwelcome, of course. I'm glad people are working on them: they aren't in the way, they serve an important public service, and they get more people hooked on Wikipedia!) Larry