On 11/6/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit(a)nl.linux.org> wrote: Well, the only sane way to apply the GFDL to Wikipedia is to treat the revisions as contributions toward a joint work, not to treat each individual edit as creating a new version under the GFDL. All of this is just speculation, though, there isn't really an explicit statement as to exactly how to apply the GFDL to Wikipedia. For translations the previous version should be stated in the section entitled history. The most straightforward way to do that would be to add a section entitled history to the article itself. One could argue that this requirement is met by simply adding a note in the edit summary, but this is a somewhat tenuous argument. You could also argue that there is an implicit license, or that any co-author in a joint work has certain rights beyond the GFDL, but these would be completely untested waters. Anthony

On 11/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: If indeed the revision history itself is considered part of the work, and that is considered the section entitled "History", then that entire section must be copied into any derivative. That section must be included, in its entirety, in any print version. The database dumps must have the information (even just the current dumps). The static version of Wikipedia, if it is resurrected, would have to have the information. The contents of Special:Export arguably should even have the information. Now you'd like to add talk pages, but only sometimes. These aren't even arguably sections entitled "History" in most cases. And it wouldn't be enough to just include talk pages, because the talk page doesn't always contain the information itself, it sometimes refers to another page. Not to mention that the requirements of the History section aren't met (no publisher, no title). And there are plenty of copy/paste moves on top of that. And you can't know the title information without looking at the move histories, so better include that too. And according to some people you've gotta include the user pages. It doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation to me. In fact, I think such an interpretation would completely subvert the intention of the GFDL, which is to make a work actually reusable. Again, I think the only sane way to apply the GFDL to Wikipedia is to treat the entire article (at the least) as a single work by multiple authors. That's the way the GFDL was intended to be applied. If two people work on a textbook, the GFDL doesn't require them to have a history section listing every single typo that was fixed by one or the other. No, they are joint authors of a single text. You only get into Modified Versions if someone comes along and forks the text. Now look, you can argue that this isn't the case, but if you are doing so you're saying that Wikipedia is out of compliance with the law, because Wikipedia is clearly out of compliance with the GFDL (and not just with regard to the History section). Isn't juriwiki a closed mailing list? I seem to remember trying to sign up there and getting auto-rejected.

On 11/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: Have you looked at the GFDL? There are a whole bunch of conditions on distribution which simply aren't being followed by Wikipedia. This is just considering the website - the dumps are even more out of compliance. This is not to say that Wikimedia is breaking the law, it is quite easy to make the argument that they have the right to distribute the information outside the rules of the GFDL. But to say that Wikimedia is in compliance with the GFDL I think ignores the plain facts of the situation. And what RMS thinks is completely irrelevant.

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Why is this a tenuous argument? There *is* a section entitled "history", viewable by clicking on the "history" tab at the top of each article. I don't think the GFDL requires the sections to all be in the same physically-transmitted HTML file... -Mark

Timwi pravi: I agree. This is the way I always mark my translations, eg. "translated from [[:en:Andorra]]" in the edit summary. IMO the whole point of GFDL is to be able to track the original authorship, and an edit summary is a perfect place for this, because it is already meant for history (ie. you only go there if you're interested who wrote what). -- Pozdrav, Roman

Chris Jenkinson wrote: That's doubly wrong. Firstly, a "source" or "reference" is where you get facts from, not the text (so it doesn't satisfy the history requirement). Secondly, if you're going to "reference" an article in another language, you might as well "reference" the article itself, which is kind of duh. Timwi

Anthony DiPierro pravi: IMHO this is slightly off-topic. Answers.com (or any other mirror's) policy is of little interest to wikipedians that translate articles from other's wikipedias (note the subject). That said, I think that [[:fr:Andorra]] on a mirror should really be a link to the French mirrored article. In this article, it should be noted that the content is from (French) Wikipedia. If the mirror site does not mirror French version of Wikipedia, then it should make sure that all fr: links are redirected to the original fr.wikipedia.org. At least this is how I understand this issue ... -- Pozdrav, Roman