Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to include the changes into the root license with no mention in the layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and would probably too much attention to this difficult issue. Although this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one... For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki User:Jamesday.
When you start using terms like "mysteriously vague attribution terms so cowardly sneaked" you lost your ground because by giving it these kind of attributes you remove room for discussion. If that is your intention, you moved yourself from [[category:Reasonable]].
It's more accurate to say that he moved himself from [[Category:Naïve]]
There is one fundamental problem that I have with your stance; I do not understand what you want to achieve and how you want to square that with the WMF aims. In my opinion the point of these aims is to bring information to all people in their language. That is the whole reason why we do this. The important aspect of the license is that is has a viral aspect. This means that the information that we provide is Free and remains Free. Typically all articles are the work of multiple people. It is also true that the only place where you can find reliably what the contributions are of one person is on his contributions page. When you are interested in personal glory then Wikipedia is not the right medium for you. In its history pages, you will find detailed information on what somebody contributed. This is much more than what the GFDL requires us to have. It is exceedingly relevant information for all kinds of purposes.
Getting down on your knees and humming this kind of mantra accomplishes fuck-all.
The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being submitted to a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'. In some cases a compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors simple because they operate a website which is used by that community. But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship credit in the world of paper.
There is again one relevant point that you fail to notice. The WMF does NOT own any copyright and neither do the licenses argue that the WMF is the owner of the copyright. This ownership of the copyright is the one relevant thing. The consequence is that your arguments are NOT about copyright but about LICENSE. The difference between license and copyright is that a copyright owner can, when he is the sole owner of this right of a work, publish this work under a different license as well. Within our project that is not an option.
A legal right with no mechanism for enforcement is a paper tiger.
The other point is a difference of emphasis. The WMF is about the publication of information. We have always been willing to have others do the distribution of this information as well because we want to make our information as widely available as possible. The changes in the license are designed to ease the distribution of the content. The authorship credit is preserved within the Wikimedia Foundation projects really well. The compulsory attribution provides two things; it points the way to where faulty information can be amended and it is the place where authors are credited for EXACTLY what they contributed.
And who is responsible for maintaining an unbroken chain of attributions? What's the rush about having "ease of distribution"? Yes, we would like to have the material universally available; that's an undisputed goal. At the same time I don't believe in charging headlong into conflicted territory just to make the life of a handful of people easier. The implications of the GFDL are completely untested in the courts, and grafting on various CC provisions only serves to muddy the waters. Ideally we should be working toward our own WMF license with a slow and deliberate consideration of every clause, but that should done in a way that would make the situation even worse.
Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the lowest cost possible. This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug. Licenses will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.
Again, you remove the relevancy of your argument by calling arguments "silly". The suggestion that these changes are unethical is faulty because you did not even touch first base; the copyright. Consequently you are wrong. One thing to realise is, is that the WMF cannot go to court over copyright or license infringements. It is the copyright holders read the authors that can.
I read the word "silly" in an ironic sense. The rest of your comment seems like a convenient excuse for doing nothing.
Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it leaves me feeling unsure and angry.
Feeling angry leaves you in a state where it is hard for you to see the reason in the arguments on the other side of this equation. That is a shame.
The "reason" in the arguments can probably be paraphrased by, "Have faith, and the Lord will provide."
Ec