[Foundation-l] Dual-Licensing Wiktionary :fr ?

Thu Nov 16 11:40:58 UTC 2006

Salut,

Thanks for this detailed explanation Gerard.
So if I sum up the whole thing, actually, you can already grab a lot of
contents for wikt:fr, but changing the license would made grabbing
definitions somewhat safer, am I right?

Right now, reactions here seem pretty positive to try a license change and I
did not see someone from the board screaming at this idea :-) Nobody is
against starting a discussion/poll about this? A local one or a Meta one?

Thanks for any comment,
Jerome

2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> A copyright holder can license his content. This is why several Open
> Source projects insist that any the ownership of a contribution that is
> to be merged  into the core of that project is to be transferred to the
> organisation that maintains the project. This way they can provide both
> free and proprietary services based on the same code-base. The Wikimedia
> projects are not the same. It is possible to write a quality NPOV
> Wikipedia article in many ways, just compare articles in different
> Wikipedias and you will see what I mean. Wiktionary is very much more
> factual; the translation for child in Dutch is kind. The gender is
> neutral, the plural is kinderen. You cannot copyright this. The
> information in WiktionaryZ and Wiktionary is very much like this. It is
> very much the reason why WiktionaryZ could be developed in this way.
>
> It is as you indicate, there are multiple copyrights involved. The
> MediaWiki is GPL. The database design is GPL. The database specific
> copyright is as indicated earlier with either with the Wikimedia
> Foundation or with the community of a Wiktionary project. It is not
> possible for a single person to lay claim to the whole of the collection.
>
> The WiktionaryZ project is completely differently organised from the
> Wiktionary projects; one is relational the other flat file organised.
> When it comes to the data itself, for Wiktionary an article exists for
> each each expression spelled in a particular way. In WiktionaryZ there
> is a record for each occurrence of the expression per language. It is
> therefore impossible for WiktionaryZ to "infringe" on the license held
> by Wiktionary in all the ways that you specify for the "database
> specific copyright".
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> Jerome Banal wrote:
> > Hello Gerard,
> >
> > Hmm, this is pretty adventurous, isn't it?
> > GPL is not compatible with GFDL and a poll to change a license of
> current
> > content is only valid if the license is entitled to the community as a
> > collaborative work and not to contributors like in the case of Wikimedia
> > projects. Otherwise, you should be only able to get edits made 100% by
> > people who agreed (but I guess, you know all that already).
> >
> > Also, in some countries (France for example), there is a
> "database-specific
> > copyright law" that may apply on dictionaries (a structured list of
> > synonyms, translations and all being nothing more than a database for
> the
> > law) and which basically forbids to copy a "substantial amount" -both in
> > term of data fields and entries- of a database (if you read some French:
> > http://www.murielle-cahen.com/p_base_de_donnees.asp).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jerome Banal
> >
> >
> > 2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com >:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two
> >> licenses that are not compatible otherwise.
> >>
> >> It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to
> >> copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of
> >> facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best
> >> there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a
> >> practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about
> >> definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about
> >> this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of
> >> defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having
> bogus
> >> information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of
> >> their collection was illegally copied.
> >>
> >> For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an
> >> application for our data that we did not think about, that is success".
> >> The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in
> >> applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD
> >> export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised
> >> language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are
> >> few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing
> >> ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not
> >> provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the
> ISO-639-6.
> >>
> >> When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright,
> >> the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the
> license.
> >> What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ
>
> >> for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete
> >> curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible
> >> to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell
> >> checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user
> >> knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the
> >> functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution
> provides.
> >>
> >> When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ,
> there
> >> are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links
> >> on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use
> the
> >> WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to
> >> /integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on
> this.
> >> >From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the
> >> active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required
> to
> >> investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into
> >> WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses
>
> >> like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The
> >> copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to
> >> grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary
> >> projects.
> >>
> >> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used
> under
> >> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>     GerardM
> >>
> >>
> >> Jerome Banal wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving
> >>>
> >> /new/
> >>
> >>> edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to
> >>>
> >> dual
> >>
> >>> licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about
> >>>
> >> whether
> >>
> >>> we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk
> >>>
> >> with
> >>
> >>> you all.
> >>>
> >>> So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
> >>> useful.
> >>>
> >>> The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
> >>> cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
> >>> specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under
> >>>
> >> GFDL
> >>
> >>> license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and
> >>>
> >> CC-by
> >>
> >>> at the same time. Which is not our case.
> >>>
> >>> Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would
> >>>
> >> make
> >>
> >>> them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help
> us
> >>> making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part,
> >>>
> >> data
> >>
> >>> part...).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
> >>>
> >>> * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of
> >>>
> >> change
> >>
> >>> would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users),
> >>>
> >> new
> >>
> >>> edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still
> reuse
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
> >>>
> >>> * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ),
> Wiktionary
> >>> content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
> >>> compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
> >>> attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
> >>> remains free so it should not be a big deal).
> >>>
> >>> * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be
> >>>
> >> possible
> >>
> >>> without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
> >>> insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
> >>>
> >>> * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
> >>> request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is
> >>>
> >> more
> >>
> >>> free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less
> restrictions,
> >>> including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be
> more
> >>> difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
> >>> enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a
> >>>
> >> different
> >>
> >>> license choice.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ)
> >>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>> bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources
> >>>
> >> -like
> >>
> >>> some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles
> in
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> past and of derivative works).
> >>>
> >>> OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
> >>> Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that
> >>>
> >> just
> >>
> >>> sound bad to you?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks all,
> >>> Jerome Banal
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>