[Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

[David Gerard]

Jens Ropers (ropers at ropersonline.com) [041203 11:47]:

> (1)
> While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient 
> thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical 
> fallacy]]):
> - WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to 
> DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
> - Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT 
> simply duplicate WP content.
> Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much 
> less than one might think.
 

I'd disagree, actually. Have you noticed how a breaking news story article
comes together on Wikipedia? It's like seeing a newsmagazine feature being
composed before your eyes. And a lot of stuff on wikinews-l is actually
newsmagazine-quality writing, not necessarily simple-grammar
inverted-pyramid newspaper-style information. So I think a lot of the stuff
on wikinews, we really will want to just copy from Wikinews to Wikipedia.


> (2)
> I would ''strongly'' argue for a public domain "license". As they say: 
> Yesterday's news is used to wrap fish tomorrow. For a news site like 
> Wikinews, the biggest asset will likely turn out to be an active, 
> striving contributor community. Yes, a PD "license" would dramatically 
> lessen Wikinews' control over content reuse, but any static copies will 
> quickly become outdated and only serve as far as their archive value 
> goes (real obnoxious automated content grabbing sited could be 
> blocked). Users will thus figure out pretty quickly that the real McCoy 
> is at wikinews.org. So little is lost by going PD and PD is what news 
> should be. Any writing "for posteriority" (where you might have bigger 
> concerns over content reuse) probably belongs at wikipedia.org anyway.


This is probably true. I suppose it depends what the contributors want.
I do know of at least one professional journalist who is really very
excited over Wikinews, and who I've contacted suggesting they weigh in with
an opinion. Something that would attract professional journalists who can't
help but write news but would like to write for someone other than Rupert
Murdoch would be marvellous.


- d.