[Foundation-l] The license situation

[Anthony]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 4:44 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> While the release of the FDL 1.3 is an important step in a process,
> it's not the end of that process. Please see the original resolution
> by the Board last year on the licensing change:
>
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/wiki/Resolution:License_update
>
> "It is hereby resolved that:
>
> * The Foundation requests that the GNU Free Documentation License be
> modified in the fashion proposed by the FSF to allow migration by mass
> collaborative projects to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license;
> * Upon the announcement of that relicensing, the Foundation will
> initiate a process of community discussion and voting before making a
> final decision on relicensing."
>
> This continues to be the plan. We do believe we've found a potential
> compromise with regard to future use of the FDL, which is part of what
> the FSF and WMF have been working on recently.
>

I highly doubt the FSF is going to give the WMF exclusive rights to
relicense GFDL content (the draft version used the text "you may relicense
the Work", not "the WMF may relicense the work", or even "the original
publisher of the work, even if they deny that they are a publisher, may
relicense the work"), so the WMF's "final decision" is basically irrelevant.