Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to include a few entire Wikipedia articles; he wrote me recently to ask whether this had been done before, and precisely how he should go about including the GFDL where, to clarify which sections of the published work it covers, and how he should most perfectly comply with the license (should he list main authors himself? all non-anon authors? should he use pseudonyms or full names of both are available? Do IP contributors ever include their real name on their user page? Will it look funny to list pseudonyms as authors in what is otherwise a scholarly text?).
If there are precedents, please point me to them. If anyone can advise on this matter, please respond! Perhaps I should I contact the FSF directly, but I thought I'd check with this list first.
--SJ, who is very curious what said book is about
I'm not an expert, but I have a few thoughts.
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
There should also be, somewhere in the book, a list of which parts are from Wikipedia, and it should list all contributors for each article - real names where available, pseudonyms where not, and rather than listing all IPs say "and a number of anonymous contributors". I personally would ask on the talkpages of those users with only pseudonyms given if perhaps they'd be willing to divulge their real name for the book - I know that I certainly would rather be cited in a book as Mark Williamson than node_ue.
And as far as listing pseudonyms looking funny: just use quotes around the name, such as "B Movie Bandit", "Vandalbot", "I Am Sexy", etc.
Mark
On 30/04/05, Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to include a few entire Wikipedia articles; he wrote me recently to ask whether this had been done before, and precisely how he should go about including the GFDL where, to clarify which sections of the published work it covers, and how he should most perfectly comply with the license (should he list main authors himself? all non-anon authors? should he use pseudonyms or full names of both are available? Do IP contributors ever include their real name on their user page? Will it look funny to list pseudonyms as authors in what is otherwise a scholarly text?).
If there are precedents, please point me to them. If anyone can advise on this matter, please respond! Perhaps I should I contact the FSF directly, but I thought I'd check with this list first.
--SJ, who is very curious what said book is about _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 5/1/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia
It is certainly not copyright Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not even a legal entity, and Wiki*m*edia does not claim copyright to any of the work other than what Jimmy assigned to the Foundation in this mail: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-June/010690.html. Generally, the copyright resides with the original holder.
Angela.
Mark Williamson wrote:
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
Will this be possible? If this was not text, but free software released under the GPL, the entire book would be have to be released under GPL. That's the "viral effect" of GPL, as intended by its creator Richard Stallman (and hated by Microsoft). Is there no such viral effect at all in GFDL?
Would there be any difference in this respect if Wikipedia had used a Creative Commons Share-Alike license instead?
(I'm fully aware that CC didn't exist in 2001, when Wikipedia was launched. I've been following this discussion since then. I'm not yet aware of any case law or court cases where the consequences of Wikipedia's GFDL status has been tried.)
On 5/1/05, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
Will this be possible? If this was not text, but free software released under the GPL, the entire book would be have to be released under GPL. That's the "viral effect" of GPL, as intended by its creator Richard Stallman (and hated by Microsoft). Is there no such viral effect at all in GFDL?
Yes, there is a 'viral effect', but it can be circumvented by considering the book a compilation rather than a single work. This is not different with the GPL. The GPL says:
"In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
In written text it is much less clear what is an aggregation of separate works and what is a single derived work, and I would not mind people taking a broad view of 'aggregate works'. In my opinion, it should be possible to include a text derived from one or more Wikipedia articles as a chapter of a book, and consider only that chapter to be under the GFDL.
Andre Engels
Will this be possible? If this was not text, but free software released under the GPL, the entire book would be have to be released under GPL. That's the "viral effect" of GPL, as intended by its creator Richard Stallman (and hated by Microsoft). Is there no such viral effect at all in GFDL?
Would there be any difference in this respect if Wikipedia had used a Creative Commons Share-Alike license instead?
(I'm fully aware that CC didn't exist in 2001, when Wikipedia was launched. I've been following this discussion since then. I'm not yet aware of any case law or court cases where the consequences of Wikipedia's GFDL status has been tried.)
Well you can use gpl software with non-gpl software.
In the case of this book, it would be easy to consider it as a collaborative work where some parts are released under GNU/FDL while the other parts are released under classical copyright (or any other licence).
On 4/30/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
Excuse me? My contributions to wikipedia are MOST CERTAINLY not owned by wikipedia and are thusly not '(C) Wikipedia'.
Now shut your trap.
I'll remind you, I included a disclaimer.
"I'm not an expert, but I have a few thoughts.
My guess is that..." quote-unquote.
Mark
On 01/05/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/30/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
Excuse me? My contributions to wikipedia are MOST CERTAINLY not owned by wikipedia and are thusly not '(C) Wikipedia'.
On 5/3/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Now shut your trap.
I'll remind you, I included a disclaimer.
Please be more civil. Whatever abruptness or rudeness was present in the sender's tone or content was matched and exceeded by the rudeness of "shut your trap".
Steve
My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation licence" or something of the sort.
No, the articles are (c) of their respective authors, released under the GNU/FDL.
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Sj wrote:
Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to include a few entire Wikipedia articles...
Just out of curiousity, which articles is (s)he using?
- -- Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
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Sj wrote:
Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to include a few entire Wikipedia articles; he wrote me recently to ask whether this had been done before, and precisely how he should go about including the GFDL where, to clarify which sections of the published work it covers, and how he should most perfectly comply with the license (should he list main authors himself? all non-anon authors? should he use pseudonyms or full names of both are available? Do IP contributors ever include their real name on their user page? Will it look funny to list pseudonyms as authors in what is otherwise a scholarly text?).
If there are precedents, please point me to them. If anyone can advise on this matter, please respond! Perhaps I should I contact the FSF directly, but I thought I'd check with this list first.
I would definitely contact the FSF about this, regardless of what other opinions you get. Not only do they have lawyers on staff, but it would be helpful to make them aware of any issues that come up when trying to use GFDL'd texts in practice, since it's fairly widely assumed that they will eventually draft a new version of the GFDL to take into account problems that have come up with the initial draft.
-Mark
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Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the names to be removed from the list? Also, anonymous users *usually* make minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling). I understand that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).
- -- Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
Sj wrote:
Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to include a few entire Wikipedia articles; he wrote me recently to ask whether this had been done before, and precisely how he should go about including the GFDL where, to clarify which sections of the published work it covers, and how he should most perfectly comply with the license (should he list main authors himself? all non-anon authors? should he use pseudonyms or full names of both are available? Do IP contributors ever include their real name on their user page? Will it look funny to list pseudonyms as authors in what is otherwise a scholarly text?).
If there are precedents, please point me to them. If anyone can advise on this matter, please respond! Perhaps I should I contact the FSF directly, but I thought I'd check with this list first.
--SJ, who is very curious what said book is about _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Faraaz Damji (frazzydee@spymac.com) [050507 06:29]:
Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the names to be removed from the list? Also, anonymous users *usually* make minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling). I understand that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).
The problem with anonymous writers is that they are, er, anonymous. Full author credits in Flyspeck 3 with "and X anonymous contributors" would surely be sufficient good-faith effort that no *sane* judge would accept a claim that a given anon wasn't identified.
- d.
On 5/6/05, Faraaz Damji frazzydee@spymac.com wrote:
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Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the names to be removed from the list?
Interesting idea. I suppose so... though many minor edits are made by users who also make major edits to the same article. There's something to be said for preferentially crediting the editors who have contributed the most to an article.
< Also, anonymous users *usually* make
minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling). I understand that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).
There have been so many strong claims made about what anonymous editors do recently! We should track them, so we can figure out which ones are accurate at any given moment. I agree with David Gerard that just saying "And anonymous editors" would be fine; the question is, for editors known only by the pseudonym "FunkyMan13," how to credit them without looking unprofessional.
And a lot of anon edits are not minor. I just browsed through the changes made to articles by the last 25 anon contributors (starting at 03:44 UTC), and 40% of them were major (adding a few sentences, a section, significant references or lists).
Still haven't found out which articles were being used, SJ
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