[Foundation-l] GFDL and relicensing

[Anthony]

On Nov 27, 2007 5:46 PM, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> >> And as far as I know, the article-only dumps
> >> do comply with the GFDL, is there a specific part you think is being
> >> violated?
> >>
> > The current version article only dumps.  Do they contain the GFDL?  Do
> > they have a compliant section entitled history?  Do they even list all
> > the authors, anywhere?
>
> I expect them to be. You can provide a GPL program in a binary only
> form, *if you make available the source code by the same way*. So if i
> can download history dumps and article dumps, and choose the dump
> without the history, it's not WMF's fault.

The GPL and GFDL are different licenses, and the requirement to
provide a transparent copy (which would be analogous to the GPL
requirement to provide source) is not the same as the requirement to
list authors in the section entitled history.  I don't think it's GPL
compliant to provide a GPL program in binary form without at least
listing the authors somewhere.  I'm not sure if the GPL requires you
to include a copy of the license or not.

> The problem would arise because history dumps fail very often for large
> wikis.

That'd be another problem.

> About containing the GFDL, the en: dump will have the GFDL at
> [[Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License]], which is also
> interesting because the GFDL text itself is not under the GFDL.
>
I wasn't sure if it was in the article only dump, which is why I
asked, but I guess it is.