[Foundation-l] GFDL 1.3 Release

[geni]

2008/11/3 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> * Later this month, we will post a re-licensing proposal for all
> Wikimedia wikis which are currently licensed under the GFDL. It will
> be collaboratively developed on meta.wiki and I will announce it here.
> This re-licensing proposal will include a simplified dual-licensing
> proposition, under which content will continue to be indefinitely
> available under GFDL, except for articles which include CC-BY-SA-only
> additions from external sources. (The terms of service, under this
> proposal, will be modified to require dual-licensing permission
> for any new changes.)

Not remotely acceptable. We accept duel licensing of images because we
already have to carry a significant overhead in terms of juggling
copyright conditions due to other causes. You want to add that
situation to text? That is not a good idea. Duel licenses are at best
a necessary evil. There is no benefit in extending the situation to
text. A clean switchover must be the objective.


> We _will_  propose to continue to permit GFDL 1.2-only media uploads
> for the forseeable future, to address concerns regarding strong and
> weak copyleft, until such concerns are fully resolved to the satisfaction
> of community members

No. We don't need to make the copyright situation more complex in fact
we should be taking the opportunity to simplify it. As part of the
switch over we should be freezeing all uploads of all images not under
directly CC-BY-SA compatible licenses (FAL GFDL 1.2 only GPL LGPL).

FAL and GFDL 1.2 only are not uploaded in large enough amounts that we
cannot absorb the loss.

GPL and LGPL are more of a problem

The strong weak copyright issues is best solved through negotiations
with CC. That said with the migration of wikipedia to CC-BY-SA pretty
much putting CC-BY-SA in the position of the grand unified free
license it is likely that any opposition to a strong copyleft position
will be reduced.


-- 
geni