[Foundation-l] GFDL 1.3 Release

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seriously - why do we have to yoke ourselves to yet another external
> organization? Clearly the binding association with the FSF has presented a
> number of problems and limitations - wouldn't it be preferable to have
> control of the terms, and write in compatibility with the licenses we'd like
> to accomodate?

The fact that Wikimedia is in the same position as any other reuser
has historically been a powerful argument that Wikipedia is not yet
another instance of some web company exploiting the labour of the
public.

It's a check on Wikimedia's power,  and it makes life far harder on
anyone who would want to try something like:

1) Pay people to stack board election, bribe or blackmail standing members, etc
2) Take over WMF and rewrite the license to suit arbitrary purposes
potentially against the public interest.
3) Profit!

Ultimately the WMF not having control of the license means that the
community of producers has more control of its destiny.

Beyond that—
WMF isn't in the license writing business. It's not demonstrated any
particular competence in that area.


On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 7:38 AM,  <psychoslave at culture-libre.org> wrote:
> Why does the MWF want to move to CC-by-sa ? I really don't understand.
> What problem do you want to solve ? As I see it, trying to switch texts to
> CC-by-sa will cause more problems than it could ever resolve. But it just
> my opinion.
>
> However I must say I'm partial. I dislike CC because I think it brings so
> many confusion on what is a free license. I would be sad if MWF projects
> would switch to a CC license.
[snip]

There is one reason why the licensing discussion is relevant in my eyes:

The situation right now is that the CC-By-SA and the GFDL are
gratuitously incompatible:  If you strictly adhere to the licenses you
can not create a new work which is derived from both GFDL and CC-By-SA
sources.   I do not believe anyone wants or expects this behaviour.
It's bad bad bad.

But this problem *DOES NOT* require switching everything to a single
license to fix. And anyone that tells you otherwise is either
misinformed or is being dishonest.

The other argued point is largely that the GFDL is of low quality.
While there are valid points on this front, much of the arguments are
made around misinformation. There are also arguments why CC-by-sa is
bad and misleading (although, admittedly, fewer).  But shortcomings in
the license can be fixed by means other than switching licenses.


On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:00 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> CC by-sa is for free content like the GPL is for software. You can
> have copyleft licenses that aren't compatible, but it's the one
> *everyone else* uses. By using a free software licence that's
> incompatible with the GPL, you're cutting yourself off from mixing
> with an entire world of software, defining your own tiny irrelevant
> bubble; by using a free content licence that's incompatible with CC
> by-sa, you're cutting yourself off from mixing with an entire world of
> content, defining your own tiny irrelevant bubble.

Indeed. (Well not quite irrelevant: Our choice drives other people to
be compatible with us. But the point that being isolated is bad is a
good point)

But there are copyleft licenses other than the GPL(v3) which are
compatible with GPL(v3). Likewise there could be compatibly between
the major copyleft content licenses.

Compatibility is a significant problem. You have and will always have
my agreement.  Making the licenses compatible solves that problem.  Us
switching license does not.  We're left in a situation where many GFDL
works are left out, because the FSF has narrowly crafted the language
so that some works (including their own) are not made compatible.
Everyone at the FSF that I've talked to agreed that that gratuitous
incompatibility with cc-by-sa sucks.

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whether that's the legal case is entirely up in the air. Even the FSF
> don't know, and I did in fact directly ask them.

The FSF isn't in the business of giving legal advice, but it simply
isn't true that they don't know if the FDL is a copyleft license:

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2007-05-08-fdl-scope