[Foundation-l] Attribution

[Klaus Graf]

As I have shown at

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Historiograf/GNU_FDL_Highway_to_Hell_-_FAQ

it is a myth that only the 5 main authors have to be mentioned
according the GFDL. This refers only to the title page and I cannot
see such a thing like a title page in the Wikipedia.

You have to read the license carefully. The principle of attribution
is codified in the preamble. "Secondarily, this License preserves for
the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not
being considered responsible for modifications made by others." If
there would be only an obligation to mention the 5 main authors this
wouldn't make sense.

The ADDENDUM gives the model for attribution for GFDL contributions:

"To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of
the License in the document and put the following copyright and
license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
"GNU Free Documentation License"."

If you are verbatim copying you have to copy 1:1, id est to keep all
sections including the section history with the collection of
copyright notices according the ADDENDUM. In the notices are fields
with the names of the authors.

For modifications there are the following relevant rules:

"D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document."

"I. 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."

The WMF opinion that the version history isn't the section history is
clearly wrong. After each modification something has to be added to
the section history OR the section history has to be created. Thus one
can only conclude that the section history is the version history.

A line in the version history is both copyright notice and part of the
section history.

Wikipedia is a de facto anonymous colloborative work with the wrong
license. CC-BY-SA would be the right license if and only if BY only
refers to Wikipedia but not to the myriad of authors.

Klaus Graf