[Foundation-l] Re-licensing Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Timwi wrote:

> As for re-licensing Wikipedia, personally, if it was up to me, I would 
> be "bold" and do it the following way. I know that this is legally 
> less secure than what Mozilla did, but I think that given our 
> situation, it is reasonable. Someone in this thread mentioned that 
> there is a judge who gives legal advice to Wikimedia -- maybe if 
> he/she could post to give their opinion on whether this is legally 
> feasible.
>
> My idea is thus:
>
> * Announce publicly the intended change of license from GFDL to WPL
>   (Wikimedia Public License), and invite contributors to complain if
>   they are unhappy with their material being re-licensed. Delete and
>   re-write the material that is complained about.
>
> * At some point (call it <date>), have all new articles licensed under
>   WPL only.
>
> * For one year starting on <date>, display a clear message on every page
>   created before <date> stating that "This material is GFDL. We are
>   intending to re-license it as WPL on <date+1year>. If you are the
>   copyright holder and do not wish for your contributions to be
>   re-licensed, please contact us."
>
> * I imagine very few people will contact us, and we can state that
>   people's silence is interpreted to mean they're OK with the
>   re-licensing.
>
> * Announce all of this extremely loudly in public. Post to all sorts of
>   message boards, have news sites report it, etc. We have enough
>   publicity to claim that we have contacted all contributors via public
>   means. At that point, I believe it is no longer our responsibility if
>   someone didn't notice anything for a whole year.
>
> * One year after <date>, switch everything to WPL-only (or whatever you
>   like). People may still complain after this, in which case we can
>   still remove and re-write their work, but it is not really our
>   responsibility that other people may have already re-used the work
>   under WPL terms.

Without committing myself to opposing or supporting this initiative, I 
would say that three years would be a more appropriate period.  This 
would correspond to the normal statutory limitation under US copyright law.

Ec