[Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?

[Andrew Gray]

2009/1/28 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:

> The new GFDL license only allows relicensing under CC-BY-SA of things
> either published for the first time on the wiki or added to the wiki
> before the new license was announced. Since this was published in a
> book first and added to Wikipedia since the new license was announced,
> it isn't eligible (without explicit permission from the copyright
> owner - which shouldn't be difficult to get).

Ha, that clause. I'd forgotten about it.

Even so, I think we can reasonably not worry ourselves overly. The
author has consented to publish it under the GFDL as normal when he
uploaded it to enwp, right? You have to split hairs very fine to
distinguish between:

a) Author uploads own work, chooses to license the "new copy" of it
under license X.

b) Author uploads own work *as licensed copy* of material previously
published elsewhere, and must be treated as such.

Which is to say, if you look hard you have a point, but there's a
perfectly legitimate interpretation going the other way, which
complies with the letter just as well and the spirit perhaps better!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk