2008/8/10 Bennett Haselton bennett@peacefire.org:

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? But once an FDL version is released that's compatible with CC-BY-SA, it'll no longer be illegal?

That's the present situation, and that's the idea.

(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.)

Yep.

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?

They are slooooooow. Because, obviously, they have to be sure they've gotten it *exactly* right. Wikimedia is by far the largest collection of GFDL material, but it certainly isn't the only one.

- d.