[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing

[Erik Moeller]

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> Is the question clear?  Maybe I should be even more specific.  How would one
> go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
> relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?  How would a third party go about using
> the combined work?  How would the attribution rights of the Citizendium
> contributors be respected?

I would say in part this is a problem that the community can
collectively solve, as it has historically: We've incorporated
information from other GFDL works and attributed them, for example.
And we can apply common sense. Contributors to wikis typically have
different attribution expectations than authors of monographs who have
no connection to the wiki world. Both authors and re-users will
express objections or support for different models. And wikis will
probably want to develop reasonable standards between them that
facilitate their mutual goals.

I do believe there are probably technical improvements that we can
make to further support free information exchange, such as a richer
page history feature, or a metadata blob for this kind of information.
But I don't think that such improvements are a necessary precondition:
people will continue to use footers, page histories, and talk pages to
denote such information. Attribution standards can always be revised
based on the respectful dialog between the involved parties. Resolving
legal incompatibility, on the other hand, is a necessary precondition
for even having these conversations.
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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