[Foundation-l] GFDL and relicensing

[Thomas Dalton]

> I think it's only theoretically impossible. As a practical matter, I
> don't think it's much of a problem. I believe we could work with the
> minority of contributors who believe their content cannot be migrated
> in a way that is satisfactory to them.

You mean "the minority of contributors who believe their content
cannot be migrated in a way that is satisfactory to them *and find out
what we're doing*". I think you're mainly relying on people not
noticing, which doesn't seem very moral to me.

> > Clauses like '...or later
> > versions.' are invalid in German jurisdiction and only the rest of the
> > license applies. [Delphine makes the same point about French law.]
>
> ... but I think as a practical matter this is not a problem, because
> you'd have to find a copyright-holding Wikipedian in Germany who (a)
> doesn't want to relicense, and (b) would prefer to spend money on
> litigation rather than simply withdraw his or her contributions (from
> Wikipedia, not from any other venue that is using the content
> consistent with older GFDL versions) .  And even if you could find
> someone for whom both (a) and (b) are true, the fact that WMF would
> likely withdraw the contributions anyway if litigation were even
> hinted at would go a long way towards building a legal defense for WMF
> in such a case.

Withdrawing contributions would be a nightmare, as I explained in a
previous email. That aside, if we agree that we need their permission
to relicense, then surely it needs to be opt-in, not opt-out? "It's
only illegal if someone sues you" may work in practice, but it doesn't
seem like a very nice way to behave.