On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 11:33:05AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
When whole Wikipedia will be included in Linux distros, distributed on CDs, and articles from Wikipedia will be used by hundreds of books and magazines and thousands of web sites, how are you going to do that ? We'd better play safe here.
How others use the material is their problem, and their risk. We shouldn't have to baby-sit them. Whatever license or copyrights are applied to Wikipedia reflects a collective comfort level. The user is still responsible for his own due-dilligence, no matter how conservative we are on the matter.
They're not "others", lot of "them" are Wikipedians. If everyone had to consult a lawyer before distributing free software, it wouldn't be half as successful as it is now.
Anything that doesn't allow Debian and other distros distribute Wikipedia in their main section is not acceptable. (That means DFSG and OSI compatibility, and "fair use" is clearly incompatible with these rules, btw. invariant sections/front and back covers etc. of GFDL are also incompatible with DFSG, negotiations with FSF are in process now to fix that problem with GFDL, plain GFDL is DFSG-compatible)
At some point along the way I get lost in the subtle distinctions that separate this alphabet soup of licenses. I'm sure that the average contributor doesn't waste much time on it either. Similarly, when we install a new piece of software, how many of us really read and understand the legalese bafflegab of licences. We just click on yes, because if we don't the program won't work. When we contribute to Wikipedia we agree to the principle that we want our writing to be generally available to the public to use as it sees fit, and that we are sharing it with like-minded individuals. We don't worry about the contortions of armchair lawyers.
The practical principle that it is easier to get forgiveness than to get permission goes a long way as long as it is applied with a level of common sense whereby we restrain ourselves from flagrant abuse. The rule of law is a good thing, but too much law is simply ignored.
All major open projects are very serious about legal issues, and none would accept "just a few lines of code" from dubious source. Some are more paranoid (like FSF and Debian), some are less, but there is no single project that would accept code or other content under "fair use", as that's very likely to cause them, their users and their distributors lot of serious legal problems.