Why are we so stuck on the GFDL? Are we (as a community) opposed to operating under another (though equally free) license that is more specific about quoutes and such?
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
Why are we so stuck on the GFDL? Are we (as a community) opposed to operating under another (though equally free) license that is more specific about quoutes and such?
Love it or hate it, we're pretty much stuck with it. Since we don't require contributors to assign copyright of their work to any central entity, switching licenses would require the permission of everyone who has contributed material.
With thousands of contributors, many of whom are known only by a transient network address and plenty of whom may be long gone and uncontactable, it would be impractical to get such permission for the entire encyclopedia. Hypothetically one could fork a new Wikipedia base using only material by people known to have agreed to a license change, but it would be an enormous amount of work to sort through it, and then you've got to redo all the stuff that's missing.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Understood...
But how does that "enourmous amount of work" compare to the legal situation that everyone (or maybe half of everyone) seems to think we are in now.
Also, is this really a Wikitech topic to begin with?
Jason
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
Why are we so stuck on the GFDL? Are we (as a community) opposed to operating under another (though equally free) license that is more specific about quoutes and such?
Love it or hate it, we're pretty much stuck with it. Since we don't require contributors to assign copyright of their work to any central entity, switching licenses would require the permission of everyone who has contributed material.
With thousands of contributors, many of whom are known only by a transient network address and plenty of whom may be long gone and uncontactable, it would be impractical to get such permission for the entire encyclopedia. Hypothetically one could fork a new Wikipedia base using only material by people known to have agreed to a license change, but it would be an enormous amount of work to sort through it, and then you've got to redo all the stuff that's missing.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Jason Richey wrote:
But how does that "enourmous amount of work" compare to the legal situation that everyone (or maybe half of everyone) seems to think we are in now.
Well, I don't think we're in any particular legal situation. The license is confusing and confining, but not terribly so.
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