"JW" == Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
JW> I notice that you're currently using the Creative Commons JW> by-sa (attribution share-alike) license. That's a good JW> license, nearly identical in spirit to the GNU FDL but not, in JW> my opinion, strictly compatible.
Yes, I'm pretty sure they're incompatible, actually.
JW> Since you're only a few days in, you could still switch to GNU JW> FDL easily enough -- this might be best for you, if you JW> envision a lot of content sharing between your site and JW> wikipedia (which seems natural).
I realize that the license incompatibility with Wikipedia articles is a serious problem. But I'm just not convinced that the GFDL is right for us.
http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Wikitravel:Why_Wikitravel_isn%27t_GFDL
However, I think that the GFDL isn't really compatible with our goals for Wikitravel.
http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Wikitravel:Goals_and_non-goals
Specifically, we want to make it really easy for a tourist information office, a hotel or guesthouse, or a party planner to have a stack of copies of a Wikitravel article for use by customers/visitors.
The heavyweight nature of the GFDL would make it hard for them to comply: just having to redistribute the entire license text and a changelog makes it unreasonable for 1-2 page articles, and having to distribute source code is just out of the question.
The Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 just requires a copyright notice and the URL of the license -- small enough to fit in a little paragraph at the end of an article.
It really bothers me a lot that the license incompatibilities make it hard to borrow content from Wikipedia. I've thought about doing a dual license, so that at least Wikitravel content could be shared into Wikipedia, if not vice versa, but it seems like a lot of trouble (and explaining).
The only consolation I have is that a lot of encyclopedic content isn't really applicable for a travel guide. But there is a lot of crossover. The trade-off is painful but apparently necessary.
JW> I'm enthusiastic about your project, and I think the idea is JW> excellent.
Thanks for the support. We're excited about the project, too!
~ESP
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