[Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

[Anthony DiPierro]

> I point out, in case this isn't clear, that dual licensing would very
> likely prevent the direct inclusion of materials from other Wikimedia
> projects, although not the other way around.

However, this isn't the case if you use "Contributor licensing", which is
the seventh choice.  Under this everything is licensed under the GFDL, but
articles can also be dual licensed as determined by the original
contributor.

> > You could allow every contributor to choose the license of his
> > choice. So, ever page would have a different license. That's what I
> > do in some of my projects.

> Would you please try to understand how and why wikis work - especially
> the most successful one - before annoying us with ideas from your
> recently started projects?

Is Wikinfo not a wiki?  Not the most successful one, for sure, but the whole
point of Erik's comment is that we're considering doing something
*different* from the rest of our projects for Wikinews.  And my point of
bringing up Wikinfo is that that's what they do (although it's restricted to
a set of licenses).

> > I am very interested in learning more about your reasoning on public
domain
> > and why it's your favourite.

> 1) It's compatible with everything.

That's why I support it as my first choice in this case.  I believe in
copyleft, but for a collaborative project like Wikinews it's too much of a
headache.  If I'm making a site by myself, I'm going to choose copyleft,
because if someone comes along and wants to negotiate a separate copyleft
with me it's really easy, there's one person to contact.  Dual-licensing (or
really multiple licensing) can do this to some extent, for licenses already
created, but it doesn't help for licenses (as opposed to license versions)
not yet created.  So you get into the real situation where just about no one
objects to Wikitravel including content from Wikipedia and vice-versa, but
it's illegal to do so without contacting every single contributor and asking
for permission.

This problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Wikinews articles are
likely to have far fewer contributors than Wikipedia articles.  But that's
why I also support "contributor licensing", which is similar to "allow every
contributor to choose the license of his choice."  But I've added the caveat
that there must be a single license which everyone can use for every
article, to facilitate mass redistribution.  But maybe that isn't even
needed.  Whatever, so far no one has voted for my idea, possibly because not
many people understand it, but no one has even commented on it or asked
about it.

It should also be noted that "compatibility" with public domain is only in
one direction.  So while we can include parts of news stories in Wikipedia
(which seems unlikely to be very useful), we can't include parts of
Wikipedia in the news stories (which seems much more useful).  That's why
when I proposed "contributor licensing" I chose the GFDL to be the standard
license that every article is licensed under.  This way parts from Wikipedia
can be used in articles which don't add the option of others.

Anthony