[Foundation-l] Help page mirroring and non-GFDL projects

[Brion Vibber]

Michael Noda wrote:
> As I first started poking around these pages on behalf of a non-WMF
> MediaWiki instance that would also like to mirror Help pages from Meta
> locally, I would appreciate it if the general case of a non-GFDL wiki
> using GFDL help pages could be addressed, and not just the particular
> instance of Wikinews.  Since we're brand-new and haven't chosen a
> license yet, this will influence our direction in coming to a decision
> there.

There is some talk that a public-domain or non-viral free-use-and- 
derivatives license would be better for a set of redistributable help 
pages, since unlike traditional documentation (eg a separate manual or 
book) they are integrated with the user's content.

The current help pages on meta are not really appropriate for 
distribution or use, and we don't have any redistributable packages for 
them at this time. (Additionally there are several competing 
organization schemes, they're mixed with other pages, they aren't clear 
who they're targetted for, they use templates outside the help 
namespace, they use images with no obvious way how to package them, it 
isn't clear what versions they apply to, etc etc.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)