From: wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell
Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2005 3:25 PM To: Wikimedia developers Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia database dumps
Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.
I think the point is:
1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?
2.) They would not be able to do this. A legal fight would be stupid; database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.
If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit history and remove it from all database dumps. But then people would still have them. It's impossible for them to do that.
3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen". By writing an article, the authors have released their work under the GFDL.
Let's not get into conspiracy theories. -HoodedMan