[Foundation-l] Wikibooks NL is changing License

[Robert Horning]

Kim Bruning wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 03:52:57PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>   
>> The copyright holder is the editor. The website is a distributor. Look 
>> again.
>>     
>
> Exactly right. 
>
> The GFDL does not apply to the first person to add a particular piece of
> content, insofar as that content is concerned. He/She sets the terms
> under which the information may be propagated. 
>
> The editor can certainly choose to do so under two different sets of
> mutually exclusive terms, and simply declare that people may choose to
> use either or both. In fact, as the copyright holder, the editor can set
> whatever terms they like [1].
>
> Note that on the long term, this particular situation will go away, as
> future revisions of CC-BY-SA and GFDL will likely be made compatible.
>
> read you soon,
> 	Kim Bruning.
>
> [1] In theory, an editor can even set terms that are not acceptable to the
> community (such as CC-NC or CC-ND, or some proprietary license). When
> such a case comes up in practice, the content is typically refused by
> the community, and deleted from the wiki.
>   

I think we are in agreement here, but the point here is that the 
community is establishing a standard (noted on the edit box, I hope) 
that the only edits that will be accepted into the project will be those 
that are dual licensed.  This isn't that the content will eventually be 
deleted, but that you are implictly signing an agreement each time you 
hit the "save" button that you agree to those terms and conditions.

What is being done here is that the nl.wikibooks community is changing 
the terms of what happens when you press that "save" button.  And they 
are trying to get this accomplished "early" enough in the history of 
their project so that the older content is the exception rather than the 
rule.  nl.wikibooks currently has about 1600 pages of content, and ranks 
#10 in terms of size compared to other wikibooks projects.  By doing 
this sort of bold move to change the licenses, they are showing that 
there is definitely an active community working on trying to develop 
content here.  That is some very good news, even if you may have 
disagreements about the move to this dual license scheme.

I would say that I hope that the WMF would establish a general policy 
that all Wikimedia user projects should be available under the GFDL 
(with obvious exceptions for Wikinews).  I think this is assumed and has 
been stated informally, but I don't know of any formal policy that 
suggests this concept.  Even if that were the case here, however, what 
is being done in this situation is not incompatible with such a 
philosophy.  They are just making additional choices available to those 
who may want to use the content.

In addition to the other issues that may come up such as importing 
content from other Wikimedia projects (including nl.wikipedia) and the 
issue of not being able to bring content back in that has been forked 
onto other web pages, this dual licensing scheme also has an additional 
problem that it might discourage purists from participation.  I think 
ultimately this is a moot issue, as the number of people who might 
participate with the knowledge they can choose separate licenses, 
including Creative Commons fans, might actually be more than those who 
want to stick with a GFDL-only environment.  For the most part the 
average contributor really isn't going to care, as long as they can use 
the content freely and have some means to reuse the content on their own 
if they want.  If they were paranoid about copyright laws and wanting to 
keep the content to themselves, they wouldn't be contributing to 
Wikimedia projects.

-- Robert Horning