[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Michael Snow]

Nathan wrote:
> I understand Milos' concern, actually, and this is the most reasonable
> objection to a URL link for attribution purposes that has been raised so
> far. It is true that the Internet is by its nature impermanent, evolving
> both in content and in structure. It's by no means guaranteed that if we
> include "
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dentistry&curid=8005&action=history"
> in a printed book in 2009 it will still be accessible in 2019.
>   
I'm familiar with that issue, of course, and respect those concerns. 
That doesn't sound like what Milos was getting at, though, as his 
subsequent comments seem to indicate. Anyway, our developers are quite 
conscious about ensuring that links to our pages from external sites 
work in a reliable manner. It's also been mentioned that people like how 
our meaningful URLs make it somewhat easier to predict where to find 
things. I imagine there's probably room for improvement still, but I 
think we do fairly well in this regard. At some point, if people really 
don't trust the internet for anything at all, they probably shouldn't be 
republishing thing they found there.

Back to the question of attribution, as it relates to the medium. Milos 
made the observation about print as an older ("less advanced") medium 
that shouldn't have to point to the newer ("more advanced") medium. In 
reality, pointing across different media happens regularly, as has been 
mentioned. I also find it curious, for people to whom the difference in 
medium matters, that some of them would be pushing to impose more 
stringent attribution requirements on the older medium because of the 
imperfections of the newer one. Let's not punish print for the faults of 
the internet. You would almost think that some people are trying to 
ensure that their contributions can only ever be reused as online text, 
which is of course contrary to the purpose of free licensing. Nobody yet 
has found the perfect answer to cover all media forms, but that 
shouldn't stop us from trying to work out solutions.

--Michael Snow