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

[Gwern Branwen]

On  0, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> scribbled:
> On 9/10/07, Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The Wikimedia projects should switch from the GFDL to the CC-BY-SA
> > license.
>
> I'm going to have to quickly kill this discussion.
>
> The Foundation is in ongoing discussions with the FSF & CC about
> resolving issues with the GFDL & ensuring better compatibility between
> licenses. We will likely present one or multiple decision paths to the
> community soon for further discussion. This is not one of them, as we
> do not have to resort to a legally risky move if a newer version of
> the GFDL is released which meets our needs.
>
> Please have a little more patience; we've been working on this issue
> for many months & we've been making significant progress.
> --
> Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
> Erik

Erik, I think in large part people are thinking along the lines of relicensing because there is so little appreciable and publicly visible progress being made. It's great that the WMF has been working on this, but it'd also be great if there were more occasional mentions that something is indeed being done. For example, is relicensing under the GSFDL an avenue that is seriously being pursued? I know there have been people saying for literally years that WP could convert to GSFDL, that the FSF was specifically working to make it possible, and that such a conversion would be desirable - but the last comment I remember was White telling me to be patient and wait for a public announcement Real Soon Now. What other avenues are being discussed? etc.

(On a side note, I think the above situation is exactly analogous to SUL and Stable version - perhaps progress is being made in private, but the rest of us can't see it and it looks to us like frustrating stagnation; even worse, "bad money drives out good" and the community may go from ignorance to outright misinformed as to the current state of affairs.)

--
gwern
NSLEP virtual secops S511 1911 Flu SORO curly Abdurahmon SAFE
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