[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Sam Johnston wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Not that that helps us much, since it is clear
>> we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will
>> be "customary" for attribution in such quite novel enterprises
>> as Wikipedia.
>>     
>
> Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative
> development of works. 


Wikipedia is novel in the degree of how fine grained
the collaboration is. But there are other works that are
somewhat collaborative in nature. And the question
then is where the line is where some special yardstick
should be applied; and is there one, or should we look
more toward the medium used in each specific case.

It is clear we already handle different media on WMF
in differing ways in many respects. Does the number
of contributors on wikipedia really amount to a qualitative
change in our nature? An argument for this view might
be deduced from the migration clauses wording, but
personally I will have to ponder on this issue before
I make my mind up.


> We can lead the way here by opening the work as
> much as possible (or should I say, reasonable) for others to reuse
> rather than locking it up with arduous yet largely useless
> requirements 

I really can't agree the requirements would be
useless, if they enable interoperability across
jurisdictions. (of course it hasn't been
exhaustively established yet whether any requirements
would be sufficient or necessary - I think that is what
we are fumbling around with in the dark here)



> (and in doing so creating an opportunity for someone else
> to build 'The Free[er] Encyclopedia').
>
>   

Given that the "Free-est Encyclopedia" is going
to be a PD encyclopedia by some peoples lights,
that isn't going to be a consideration, ever, if we
want to remain in the copy-left continuum.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen