[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Sam Johnston]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
>> > Please stop beating the dead horse. No one has ever suggested that full
>> > attributions are necessary.
>>
>> Yes they have.
>
> Citation?

Thomas Dalton.

>>  - Partial attribution creates opportunities for external conflict
>> (think DMCA, lawsuits, etc.) where those excluded take exception,
>> which leads us to:
>
> Yes, but how is this worse than no attribution at all? Surely, anyone who will
> object to being out of a partial attribution will also object not being
> attributed at all.

Not at all. It is one thing to contribute to an article which is
attributed to the community itself and another altogether to see it
contributed to another community member.

> What you wrote after that is completely fictional.

That's a compelling counter-argument if I've ever seen one. Fact is
that if you offer something to someone (e.g. the option of being
attributed) it is human nature for them to take it even if only
because the guy next door has it. Many (myself included) would not
have cared were it not offered at all, but would feel 'forced' to
opt-in rather than have their work attributed to someone else
(definitely worse than no attribution at all).

>> Wikis, or 'Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Sites' (as the FSF calls
>> them) are a relatively new concept. Copyright, attribution, etc. works
>> well for individuals and extends to relatively small groups (e.g.
>> bands, tv/film crews, journals, etc.) but many of us believe that it
>> breaks badly at this scale.
>
> Many of us also do not. Film crews are still typically larger than the number
> of editors of a Wikipedia article.

It's been noted numerous times that the most interesting articles (and
thus most likely to be reused) are going to have the most authors,
often hundreds if not thousands (the 'Internet' article has almost
FOUR THOUSAND unique editors for example). The fact that an
embarrassingly large number of articles are stubs is not all that
relevant (stubs aren't reused) and obscure topics like serbian folk
astronomy[1] are never going to attract a huge number of authors.

> OK. Could you please show me how to find the authors of the article "Gay
> Nigger Association of America" as of May 2006?

Interesting point, and another very good reason not to require full
attribution - were the attribution to Wikipedia as proposed then
deletions wouldn't matter. Attribution-by-URL it seems could well
require dredging up the deletionist debate.

Sam

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nikola_Smolenski/Serbian_folk_astronomy