I sort of agree with this! I have to confess that this has been my attitude from the start. We just say "It is released under the GNU FDL" and I didn't worry too much about the exact details. The 5 author requirement, etc. are puzzling.

This would be simple to resolve; the semi-official standard at Wikipedia is no authorship; so we'd just have to state that officially. We could state that's different for the Wikipedia commentary and individual pages.

Problem solved. :)

I would actually prefer if we had a way to release under a Wikipedia-specific license, but I think we need the instant "free" credibility of the GNU FDL license. It tells people immediately that they can count on certain things.

Not only that, the license is pretty tightly put together; it's marvelously specific about printed publications, which is crucial, and it's still applicable to electronic publications, an area in which the law is still vague and changing.

And, so I think that as long as we're using the GNU FDL, we need to do what we can to "get it right" for the more pedantic among us. :-)

I'm dead certain that the Free Software Foundation would be more than willing to get their lawyer to help us get it right. My recommendation would be for us to draw up a set of questions and proposed answers, and present them to the FSF for review. They might even be willing to do a conference call or some sort with Jimbo and Larry.