[Foundation-l] Licensing update: "third party" concern

[Marcin Cieslak]

Hello,

I'm stuck in transation of the licensing update meta page into the
Polish language, and I am pretty sure I will be unable to handle
questions from the community regarding understanding of the "externally
contributed content" as used in the proposed terms and conditions.

There is some confusion regarding the term "third party" on the
meta page as well. This has been raised on a talk page already:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Licensing_update#Proposed_terms_of_use

Specifically, this point from the meta page:

"2. to require continued dual-licensing of new community edits in
this manner, but allow content from third parties to be under
CC-BY-SA only;"

Reading new terms and conditions one could have impression that we
create two categories of contributors:

- wikimedia community is bound to dual-license their contributions
- some third parties are allowed to use CC-BY-SA only.

I find this very confusing and most probably this is not an intended
effect.

Erik responded with "A very good point; I agree that we should try
to come up with a good definition of what "external" means here."

I think this point is critical to our understanding how of what is
the actual future licensing of the contributed content.  If we don't
clarify, why we need those two categories of contributions (and
contributors!) and, if we need them, we clearly explain the distinction
between them - this is going to be a very bad change.

I personally find it very disturbing to have it unclear while the
vote is underway already and I don't like "We'll clarify this later,
just do vote now" attitude.

--
	      << Marcin Cieslak // saper at system.pl >>