Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:
Specifically, if Bomis is claiming ownership then they can, on a whim overnight change the license to anything they want. Not that I believe Jimbo Wales would do such a thing, but car accidents happen all the time and liquidators don't care didly about the project. Yeah, I know; all the older versions of the 'pedia would still be under the FDL. But one of the reasons I contribute is because I have the knowledge that what I do here will forever be free and there will never be an unfree version. I really don't know if I would continue contributing without this knowledge. --maveric149, Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Jimbo what is the official position so the the text can be updated?
BTW, what, if any, plans are there for licensing the "collection" of articles? Could this be done with a dual license that would enable a future non-free publication of the collection of articles (although the articles themselves would still be 100% free -- if this is can be done, then one couldn't amass more than a certain percentage of the articles in any one publication without permission - not sure if that is even legal with the FDL, let alone practical)? Last two questions have no intent or direction behind them.... just interested.
I think that there's no way for anyone to "dual license" the articles, not even me.
The official position is the copyright is held by the author(s) of a given article, and they release it under the GFDL. Bomis can't release a non-free version any more than anyone else can.
In the event that there is a substantial violation of the GFDL, substantial to the point that a court resolution is necessary, and perhaps monetary damages possible, then it would surely make sense for several authors to join together (probably with me funding the effort if I can) in the lawsuit, all profiting from the settlement.
--Jimbo
LDC replies to maveric:
I'm sure it's just outdated. From the discussions we've had about the
topic
here and on the mailing list, it's clear that the intent is that Bomis
hold a
collection copyright on Wikipedia as a whole, but that individual
articles
are still copyrighted by their original author(s), who grant use of
them
under the GFDL to Bomis and to the public. Further, Bomis grants
license to
use the collection under the GFDL as well. Yes, there need to be
clearer
statements of these legal positions here. -- Lee Daniel Crocker
Why does "Bomis hold a collection copyright on Wikipedia as a whole"? I think the contributors are the ones who form the collection (create the hypertext structure, "place the links"). Where is the essential part that Bomis adds to Wikipedia (in an ideal way - I don't mean the server space)?
Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful to Jimbo/the Bomis people for making this possible. It's just something I don't understand (but I'm no lawyer) - could someone explain this to me?
Bye, Kurt
P.S.: I can hardly wait to have the German WP running under the PHP script.
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