[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> The relevant GFDL clause states: "List on the Title Page, as authors,
> one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the
> modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of
> the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors,
> if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this
> requirement."
>

There's another relevant clause: "Preserve the section Entitled "History",
Preserve its Title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year,
new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title
Page.  If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on
its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated
in the previous sentence."

Now, when I first read that I interpreted "authors" to mean all authors, but
I've heard someone else interpret it to mean "authors...as given on its
Title Page", which in the case of Wikipedia articles, would be no one.


> Most people have chosen to ignore the "principal authors" requirement
> and to try to attribute every author instead because there's no
> obvious way to determine who the principal authors are. I remember a
> few years back that Anthony tried a completely different approach,
> where he created a full copy of Wikipedia (under the assumption that
> it's a single GFDL work) and attributed it to five people on the
> frontpage. Anthony, please correct me if my recollection is incorrect.
>

That's extremely misleading and/or incorrect.  I listed 5 authors on the
title page (http://web.archive.org/web/20050202210758/http://mcfly.org/),
but I listed *all* the authors on a page which I linked from a page entitled
"GFDL History" (
http://web.archive.org/web/20050217045214/en.mcfly.org/GFDL_History, which
unfortunately does not contain the linked page, probably because it was so
huge).  Furthermore, I did not base my use on the assumption that Wikipedia
is a single GFDL work.  Rather, I based my use on the assumption that
*either* Wikipedia is a single GFDL work *or* that it could be merged into a
single work under section 5 "Combining Documents".

Also, I would like to point out that the GFDL does not say to list *the*
five principal authors, it says to list "five *of* the principal authors".