[Foundation-l] Licensing update rolled out in all languages/projects

[Yoni Weiden]

I have four questions/requests:
1) Can you produce a list of all new mediawiki messages related to the
change? Also, a list of old messages and their old content is also needed,
to help us maintain a certain level of wording consistancy.
2) I have been translating word-by-word from English and found it hard to
explain some points. Especially was the idea that Wikipedian's contributions
are published as CC-BY-SA *and *as GFDL, while contributions from "outside"
people can be CC-BY-SA only. Why am I (a wikipedian) required to publish my
work in both licenses but my non-wikipedian friend isn't? If we are a
CC-BY-SA site as presented at the pottom of every en.wiki page, why bother
with GFDL licensing? It's too confusing.
3) More importantly, I get the impression that each community can add/change
their licensing. Can he.wiki decide that all contributions from this day and
onwards will be published as CC-BY-SA only?
4) What is the licensing of pre-June 15th 2009 revisions (which are
accessible through the history page)? Are they GFDL *and *CC-BY-SA now?

Thanks,
Yoni
2009/6/30 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>

> After an initial reference implementation in the English Wikipedia and
> some bottom-up implementations in a number of projects, the licensing
> update to the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License as the
> primary text license, with GFDL as a secondary license with
> limitations, has now been implemented in all previously GFDL-licensed
> Wikimedia Foundation projects.
>
> Wiki communities can now customize these texts further in accordance
> with the implementation guidelines issued by the Wikimedia Foundation
> at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
>
> Importantly, this allows Wikimedia wiki communities to create their
> own copy of the terms of use, with specific limitations on or
> guidelines for attribution of externally imported CC-BY-SA content,
> more detailed explanations for re-users, etc. The implementation
> guidelines do allow significant flexibility, but we're hoping to
> ensure baseline consistency across projects and languages, so please
> do not deviate significantly from the guidelines. (If you feel the
> guidelines are flawed, feel free to comment on the talk page on meta.)
>
> If the messages have not been translated into your language yet, it is
> appreciated to do this work through <translatewiki.net> so that it
> doesn't have to be redundantly done for each Wikimedia project in that
> language. As translatewiki.net translators know, localization changes
> from there are rolled out regularly alongside normal code updates.
> Thanks to our good friends there for helping with the process so far,
> and thanks to all the translators.
>
> The relevant user interface texts are MediaWiki system messages and
> can be viewed and edited through the MediaWiki: namespace. They are:
>
> [[MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright]] for the site footer
> [[MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning]] for the editing page, above
> the save/preview buttons
> [[MediaWiki:Wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary]] for the editing page,
> below the save/preview buttons.
>
> For the more technical users, these changes were introduced to
> MediaWiki in the following code revision:
> <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/52361>. They
> live in the WikimediaMessages extension, which is only used by
> Wikimedia Foundation wikis. These messages override standard system
> messages, [[MediaWiki:Copyright]] and [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]].
> [[MediaWiki:Edittools]] has sometimes been used to move this type of
> licensing information below the buttons/summary; the newly introduced
> [[MediaWiki:Wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary]] is meant to reflect this
> need while allowing us to consistently update/review these messages.
>
> Finally, a note on trademark recognition. Some projects have a little
> trademark notice in the footers, others don't. This notice isn't
> required (but helpful); we're working on standardized trademark usage
> guidelines, and we'll probably add a link to the site footer to these
> once they're finalized.
>
> I'll be checking the wikis, and particularly [[m:Talk:Licensing
> update]] and [[m:Talk:Licensing update/Implementation]] for comments,
> but please let me know if there are any immediate issues.
>
> Thanks,
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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