> 1) To clarify that Wikimedia wikis may host gadgets and user scripts
> licensed under GPL and not CC BY-SA.

We'd need some technical changes to make that possible on top of the policy changes, I think? Insofar as submitting a JS page currently gets the exact same licensing blurb above the publish button as all other wiki content, so there's currently no way to submit something *without* licensing it as (generally, depending on project) CC-BY-SA4+GDFL. Apart from arguably using Special:Import for all edits, I guess, but almost nobody is allowed to use that.

(There's probably a bunch of other complications about having some random bits of on-wiki content licensed differently, given usage of the database dumps by various people. But that's for the lawyers to think about.)

On Sun, Dec 29, 2024 at 7:35 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com> wrote:

Il 27/12/24 18:17, Siddharth VP ha scritto:
> Also, some concerns have been raised previously about GPL not being
> compatible with CC-BY-SA. Since all code hosted on-wiki are implicitly
> under CC-BY-SA, they cannot also be GPL-licensed, *meaning that gadgets and
> user scripts cannot use Codex at all.*

Is the premise of this theory that gadgets and user scripts *must* in
all cases be licensed under CC BY-SA? That's incorrect, as
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use#7> makes
plainly clear, because various cases exist where other licenses apply.
Of course you can't take GPL code as is and expect to relicense it under
CC BY-SA, but that's not necessary.

It seems we have already two interesting questions for WMF legal:

1) To clarify that Wikimedia wikis may host gadgets and user scripts
licensed under GPL and not CC BY-SA.

2) In which cases a user script or gadget using Codex would trigger
§5(3) https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#section5 [as opposed to
creating a mere "aggregate"].

There's no need to rush any decisions until such questions are answered.

On (1) I'll note:

* This can leverage the ToS provision that «The only exception is if the
Project edition or feature requires a different license. In that case,
you agree to license any text you contribute under the particular
license prescribed by the Project edition or the feature.»
* Conversion from CC BY-SA to GPLv3 for legacy content is explicitly
allowed by the importing clause thanks to the one-way compatibility:
<https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses/>.
* The text import clause is not particularly useful for GPL text because
the compatibility is one way.
* I would not recommend having GFDL-only code, though it may be allowed
by the terms of use.

Best,
Federico
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