[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Mike Linksvayer]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:56 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> WMF used to really be a (choose a heavy-weight designation) pound
> gorilla in the GFDL users pool.
>
> When we transition to the Creative Commons universe, we will
> never again regain that status, and a combative stance will
> do us no favors.

I think gaging the relative status of Wikimedia projects in the GFDL
and CC-BY-SA universes by the size alone is an apples-to-oranges
comparison. Wikipedia might be the only GFDL project most people could
name, but in that universe the needs of GNU software manuals carry a
lot of weight. The CC-BY-SA universe is much bigger and more diverse,
but Wikimedia projects would be the single most influential player (in
many senses already have been for years), in what I'm certain will be
a very symbiotic relationship, including the parts where some members
of the community take combative stances.

> So at the very minimum, it would well serve us to know what the
> established standards are within CC-BY-SA, in particular focusing
> on the "BY" part.

As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is
highly medium specific.  Personally, I think the guidelines Erik has
mooted are very much in line with what CC-BY-SA enables and the wiki
medium, but there's no better group than this (meaning Wikimedia
projects collectively, if not just foundation-l) to improve on these
if needed.

And back to the weight of Wikimedia projects within and symbiotic
relationship with the CC-BY-SA universe, if there's anything that can
be done to clarify or otherwise improve license support for
attribution in massively collaborative projects, I fully expect input
from Wikimedia communities/projects/staff to be the most important
input into shaping such improvements in any eventual versioning of
CC-BY-SA.

Mike