[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Chad]

We talk a lot on this list about what level of attribution is "enough."
Is a link to Wikipedia enough? A link to the article? A list of top
authors? A link to the full history? Include the full history? There's
a lot of varying opinions on this list, and its very easy to see that
any sort of compromise is going to be difficult. On some aspects
of this, everyone is going to have to make concessions. No one
person's solution will be accepted 100%.

The one question that remains in my mind is: how many people
share your views? Some people are very adamant about full
attribution. Do you know how many people support your position
(and I'm not talking about on this list)? How about those who are
arguing for just a link to the history? The same question applies.

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> [snip]
> * I'm developing a simple LimeSurvey-based survey to get a feel on
> prevalent opinions regarding some of the attribution-relevant
> questions from a sample of contributors.
> [snip]
This is the only point I wanted to reply to out of Erik's e-mail. To be
perfectly honest, I would be fascinated by the results of the survey.

I think this is honestly the *only* way to decide this issue once and
for all. This topic has been going around for a while now, and I've
yet to see any progress on the attribution issue. The same points
have been made 10 times over, and they've been rebuted as many
times. The same arguments have been made but not accepted.
This applies equally for all sides. It has become increasingly
obvious to me that the foundation-l community cannot decide this
on their own. At some point, you've got to get a wider perspective
on what people's opinions are.

I only think a poll of the community could settle the issue. Is
there any point in requiring full attribution if only 0.001% of the
community desires it? If 75+% of the community thinks that a
single mention that an article is "from Wikipedia" isn't nearly
enough, is there any point to suggesting that as a solution?

-Chad