[Foundation-l] Let's switch to CC-BY-SA

[Axel Boldt]

The Wikimedia projects should switch from the GFDL to the CC-BY-SA
license.

Why to switch
=============

When we started, the CC-BY-SA didn't exist and GFDL was the only 
available license that expressed the "free-to-use-and-modify-but- 
creators-need-to-be-attributed-and-the-license-cannot-be-changed" 
idea for textual materials. Since then, we have largely ignored 
the more arcane features of the GFDL, essentially telling our users "If

you keep the license and provide a link back to the original, you're 
welcome to use our materials." In other words, we have always used GFDL

as if it were CC-BY-SA. This practice is unfair for two reasons:

    * People who want to use our content have to trust that we won't 
enforce the more arcane features of the GFDL in the future, such as the

requirement to change the article's title or to explicitly list at
least 
five principal authors.

    * Contributors to Wikimedia projects have to trust that no one will

exploit the GFDL in the future and encumber their materials with 
non-changeable text ("invariant sections").

By contrast, the CC-BY-SA license has the following advantages:

    * It is simple and fits our precise requirements.

    * It is promoted, maintained and translated by an active 
organization, Creative Commons.

    * It is better known and more widely used than the GFDL, at least 
outside of Wikimedia projects, increasing the potential for re-use and 
collaboration.

We should do the right thing, bring theory and practice into alignment,
and switch to the CC-BY-SA license once and for all.

How to switch
=============

Here's the plan: we issue a press release and post a prominent website 
banner, saying that from some specified date on, the current and all 
future versions of all materials on Wikimedia servers will be
considered  
released under CC-BY-SA. Any content creator who does not agree with 
this change is invited to have their materials removed before that
date.

I don't see how any good-faith contributor who has researched the 
licenses could disagree with this change and prefer GFDL over CC-BY-SA.

A small group of disgruntled former contributors will probably use the 
occasion to get their material wiped from our servers, and I don't see 
anything wrong with that. Some trolls will attempt to game the system,
but we can deal with that.

All materials in the history up to the specified deadline should
probably remain available under GFDL only; this makes it easier to deal
with the material of contributors who disagree with the change. And we
need to find some way to deal with discussion and policy pages.

I realize that this opt-out procedure is not perfectly clean from a 
legalistic standpoint, but neither is our current distortion of the 
GFDL. If we look at it pragmatically, considering what YouTube and the 
Internet Archive can get away with, there doesn't seem to be any 
appreciable danger that we could be successfully sued over this matter;

the number of true copyright violations that appear on Wikipedia every 
day are a much bigger cause for concern. And ethically speaking,
there's 
nothing wrong with the opt-out approach since the two licenses are, in 
essence and intent, identical.

--Axel


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