[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

[Toby Bartels]

Erik Moeller (Eloquence) wrote in part

>Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>>??? wrote:

>>>There is even the
>>>question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their
>>>content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be
>>>more practical in this instance.

>>Then that project would not be free content.

>By the definition of the Free Software Foundation, that is correct.
>However, that definition is not the only one. In fact, most people have an
>entirely different understanding of "free content."

Actually, mav is not correct even by the FSF's definitions.

The FSF doesn't even use the term "content" in the first place
(see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content>),
but they do use the phrase "free documentation".
They don't define that phrase specifically, but say "The criterion
for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software [code]."
(see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html>),
and for code they say "The simplest way to make a program free
is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted."
(see <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html>).
So the public domain is free, even according to the FSF.

What mav ''intends'' to say, I believe, is that Wikinews should be COPYLEFT.
There are certainly arguments to be made for that position.
But public domain and CC-by documents ARE FREE documents.
As such, even the FSF would be willing to use them in GNU documentation.
PD and CC-by just are not copyleft.  (CC-by-sa is copyleft,
while CC-by-nd, CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa and CC-by-nc-nd
are not even free, at least not by the FSF's standards.)

What is the difference between free and copyleft?
Fundamentally, a document is free if ''it'' may be used freely:
freely read, freely copied, freely modified, and freely distributed
(see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
or <http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines>).
A document is copyleft if ''its derivatives'' may be used freely.

For example, the Brothers Grimm published a story "Schneewittchen",
and their work ended up (through the passage of time) in the public domain.
As such, it was free: freely usable, copyable, modifiable, and distributatble.
In 1938, Walt Disney took advantage of the latter two freedoms
to create a derivative work "Snow White", which is still copyright today.
The Disney movie is not free, even though it's based on the free Grimm story.
This was possible because the Grimm story, while free, was not copyleft.

Now, anybody with a soul hates the Walt Disney Company (I joke somewhat),
so this gives an indication of the argument in favour of copyleft.
But there's also the argument that this doesn't apply to Wikinews.
(There are also arguments against copyleft in general,
the Disney problem notwithstanding.)

We can have this argument, but let's be clear about what we're arguing over.
AFAIK, ''nobody'' is advocating that Wikimedia publish non-free articles.
(There is the issue of incorporating fair use items ''within'' articles,
such as quotations and images, but that is a different discussion.)
The question is whether their freedom must be protected by copyleft.

>>Public domain and non-share-alike attribution licenses encourage mutually
>>incompatible content forks where improvements that create derivative
>>works cannot be re-incorporated back into the original - meaning there
>>is no positive feeback loop.

>Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution-
>only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of
>content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people
>as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?"  The possibility
>that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia
>projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

Does anybody disagree with Erik's final sentence here?
This discussion was sparked (at least in today's incarnation)
by a Foundation rule referring to licences "like" the GNU FDL.
We should continue to discuss and refine our ideas about
what copyleft protection Wikimedia should use for our free documents;
but as far as ''that'' rule is concerned, I believe that all we need to do
is to clarify that by "like" the GNU FDL, we mean «free».


-- Toby