[Foundation-l] The license situation

[John at Darkstar]

That you request a possible mgration does not solve the real issue, you
can't relicense content you do not own. I tried to get a clear answare
in the past if such a relicensing is considered a single sided
renegotiation of a contract, and given the described scenario, ie
relicensing of the Wikimedia projects, very few in Noraway are willing
to bet on the legalty of the project. The only one I've found are
someone deeply involved in Creative Commons, and one other person that
guessed it might be legal if the contributors was given the opportunity
to opt out. Note that if one contributor opts out then all later
revisions has to be purged.

Note also that in Norway the law explicitly states that the authors are
to be given credit, and this isn't something they can release any
publisher from doing. One person I've asked said it like this; you can
use a non-by attribution license but still the publisher has to give you
credit.

Right now we tell the newspapers to give credit to "Wikipedia" but this
is in fact a little bit fishy, but it is the best we can do given the
present code - we can't tell them exactly who wrote the content. Note
also that the problem isn't really much easier when we have to deal with
"main authors" and "minor authors".

My guess is that such a relicensing isn't legal in Norway.

John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> 2008/10/18 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
>> Why debate the license terms here and now?
> 
> Because CC has tried to address some of the concerns and objections,
> it would be good to know what you perceive as the key remaining
> issues. I've found CC generally to be very responsive and open to the
> needs of the Wikimedia community.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Erik