Hey guys -- someone posted a question / objection to Wikinvest's terms of service a while back. I'm one of the cofounders of Wikinvest, but as I'm not subscribed to Wikitech-l, I didn't hear about it until now. Anyway, I wanted to address Mark Clements' concerns (full text below for those who don't remember). To answer some (and apologize for others!):
1) The modifications Wikinvest made to MediaWiki are not GPL (this isn't a requirement of the GPL license) -- although, we're interested in giving back to the community. It was so helpful to have this great platform (MediaWiki) for us to build on and we'd love to contribute some of the stuff we've built on top of it back. There's a bunch of stuff we've built on top of the platform -- anyone have any suggestions for what we be useful to others? Of the stuff we've built, what do you guys want and think would be useful to the project?
2) The fact that we didn't have clear, visible attribution to MediaWiki and the community that built it is really not cool on our part -- I apologize for that. I can only say that it was not an attempt to "hide" our use of MediaWiki, it was more an "oh my god we're working 18-hour days 7 days a week for launch" and we didn't understand the attribution requirements / forgot to properly give credit. Thanks for pointing it out, my apologies again, and there's now a big button on every page on our site that specifies we are "powered by MediaWiki" and gives credit where it's due.
3) Our help content was borrowed from Wikipedia -- I unfortunately didn't quite understand the requirements on how the attribution should work. The attribution now links to the original Wikipedia content, the article history (to credit all the contributors), the GFDL license on Wikipedia, and also specifies that all our help content is GFDL'd, which I think covers all the requirements but let me know if I'm still messing it up.
Anyway, hopefully I've got all this right now, and I hope there are no hard feelings. If you have any other suggestions for the site (and if any of you guys are interested in potentially joining us) please let me know...
Parker
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Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk <wikitech-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BWikitech-l%5D%20Wikinvest%20is%20looking%20for%20world%20class%20developers%0A%09whoare%20passionate%20about%20wikis%20and%20want%20to%20extend%20mediawiki&In-Reply-To=>> wrote:
Point 8 in the terms of service[1] includes the line (emphasis mine): "You may not modify, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly display or in any way exploit, any of the content, SOFTWARE, and/or materials available on Wikinvest, in whole or in part, except as expressly provided in Nvest's policies and procedures made available via Wikinvest."
Isn't this a violation of the GPL for MediaWiki. Or perhaps it is referring to some other software (in which case clarification is probably required)?
In addition I found no mention that the site was powered by MediaWiki and that the software, including any modifications you have made, is available under the GPL. I am unsure whether this is a requirement, though - perhaps someone can clarify that.
Finally, there is a lot of help content that has been copied from Wikipedia, and aside from a 'thank you' on the contents page[2] there is no attribution. These pages need a clear link to the source article, and to the full GFDL text. Also, it should be noted that all edits made to these pages are also (by definition) licensed under the GFDL. If it would make things easier, there are some public domain help pages being developed at mediawiki.org [3], which aren't quite as good or as thorough, but which may be used without attribution. - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
[1] http://www.wikinvest.com/site/Terms_of_Service [2] http://www.wikinvest.com/help/Contents [3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents