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

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/1/30 Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk>:
> 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!

While the spirit is clearly would allow us to relicense it (assuming
the person that actually uploaded it is the sole copyright owner - the
publishing company/editor might own some of the rights, I don't know
how such things work), my reading of the letter of the license would
say it's very clearly not allowed.