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

[Erik Moeller]

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

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