Hoi,
So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license. With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not feasible to export the complete history with every word.
I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the data when it finds this other use.
Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
Basically I have two questions;
*What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use of the UW data *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change the license?
Thanks, GerardM
IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).
I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary archive.
On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi,
So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license. With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not feasible to export the complete history with every word.
I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the data when it finds this other use.
Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
Basically I have two questions;
*What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use of the UW data *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change the license?
Thanks, GerardM
Wiktionary-l mailing list Wiktionary-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
Ian Monroe wrote:
IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).
When data is imported into Ultimate Wiktionary it will first be converted beyond recognition of the orignial content. One difference you discount is that Wiktionay and Wikipedia are GNU-FDL at this moment in time. Ultimate Wiktionary will be a completely different database and as such all content can be considered new content with a new license. Why use the Wikipedia word ??
I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary archive.
We are only talking Wiktionary here. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Adding History information on a talk page in the Ultimate Wiktionary DOES allow for pinpointing who contributed to an article it just does not show WHAT was contributed.
When we distribute content it will not be in the same format as the Ultimate Wiktionary. It will be completely seperate from it and we DO want people to use it and contribute to UW. As UW will be the source of .dict information people will update UW in order to improve their next import.
There will be not one wiktionary archive, the potential exists that all wiktionaries will be imported into UW and what is the point of keeping these as archives if they serve no purpose?
Thanks, GerardM
On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi,
So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license. With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not feasible to export the complete history with every word.
I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the data when it finds this other use.
Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
Basically I have two questions;
*What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use of the UW data *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change the license?
Thanks, GerardM
Wiktionary-l mailing list Wiktionary-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
Wiktionary-l mailing list Wiktionary-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Ian Monroe wrote:
IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).
When data is imported into Ultimate Wiktionary it will first be converted beyond recognition of the orignial content. One difference you discount is that Wiktionay and Wikipedia are GNU-FDL at this moment in time. Ultimate Wiktionary will be a completely different database and as such all content can be considered new content with a new license. Why use the Wikipedia word ??
People commonly take from Wikipedia, for instance articles that don't deserve Encyclopedia entries get moved to Wiktionary. Given that its hard enough to stop people from importing dictionary.com, good luck explaining they can't use content from Wikipedia.
I still don't see how a change in license for Wiktionary or Wikipedia could ever be possible. It would be possible had people given up their copyrights to Wikimedia, but isn't what happens, everyone still has their copyrights. When an open source software project wants to change its license they have to go through and get permission from everyone/every company that has contributed and re-write the parts they don't have permission for. Quite hard in a software project, impossible for any of the Wikimedia projects.
Converting something (give a new format?) doesn't mean the original copyright holders lose their rights to it... works the same with translation into a new language. German Harry Potter might be converted beyond recognition as far as J.K. Rowling is concerned, but she still owns the copyright. And yes I know we're talking about Wiktionary, not Harry Potter, its an example. :D
Or is Ultimate Wiktionary throwing out everything from current Wiktionary?
I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary archive.
We are only talking Wiktionary here. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Adding History information on a talk page in the Ultimate Wiktionary DOES allow for pinpointing who contributed to an article it just does not show WHAT was contributed.
Wikipedia is another GFDL project... I was using it as an example.
I don't think the GFDL requires to show what was contributed, does it?
When we distribute content it will not be in the same format as the Ultimate Wiktionary. It will be completely seperate from it and we DO want people to use it and contribute to UW. As UW will be the source of .dict information people will update UW in order to improve their next import.
There will be not one wiktionary archive, the potential exists that all wiktionaries will be imported into UW and what is the point of keeping these as archives if they serve no purpose?
To keep a history of the project and you were concerned about giving credit, so I suggested that a static archive site be created. Not too complicated I don't think. :)
Thanks, GerardM
wiktionary-l@lists.wikimedia.org