[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Platonides]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2009/1/21 Thomas Dalton:
>> A lot of the problems you are having there are because you are trying
>> to group things into "print" and "online". The correct dichotomy is
>> "online" and "offline". Of course you are going to have problems
>> classifying DVDs if your classifaction systems assumes all electronic
>> data is only available on the internet. I don't see a problem with
>> listing authors in fairly small print on the back of a t-shirt, seems
>> perfectly reasonable to me. If instead of names there's just a URL on
>> the t-shirt, does that mean I can't where it in China since people
>> seeing it won't have any way (without significant technical know-how)
>> to view the list of authors?
> 
> Nor would you be able to access the list of authors on a mirror that
> carries it by reference. Whether you draw the distinction between
> print or non-print, or between "online" and "offline", is always
> somewhat arbitrary, as content can change from one state to another
> very easily. (A file downloaded to your harddisk becomes an offline
> copy; so does an email attachment.) A licensing regime that relies on
> such arbitrary transformations of attribution is fundamentally
> unworkable for re-users.

Think on it like in GPL terms.
The site presents you both the bianry and the source. You decide only to
download the binary. Well, that's your option. The point is, you CAN
download the sources.
So, if you save the page into your harddisk, and only the page, choosing
not to save the authors, you're not breaking the license. Whereas if you
handed anyone else book pritned from wikipedia, you must be able to
answer the question "Who wrote this?"
And no, "some Wikipedians" is not a valid answer, just like "a bunch of
geeks" is neither an acceptable answer to "Who wrote the Linux kernel?"

If you're providing DVDs with the articles you'll have a hard time to
convince me not to add the author list.
However, if you're copying an article into a friend's usb key I may
accept leaving the history info aside, depending on things like his
means to get online, his technical abilities to find it or your
knowledge that he doesn't want it.

Instead of placing the proposed guidelines into the 'Attribution'
section, I think we may be able to better if instead it just said 'You
must provide proper attribution to the authors' and link to a FAQ
listing recommended ways to do that on a case-per-case basis.
Making a definition suitable for everything, someone will always dispute
it based on some obscure use case, whereas it's much easier to agree on
how could attribution be provided for a postcard.