[Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1

[Samuel Klein]

Brad : the practical implications are that we will lose the ability to
copy work from a set of familiar collaborative sites -- many of which
chose their license specifically to facilitate long-term exchange with
Wikipedia -- and  they will slowly lose access to the latest WP
updates over months or years.   (we are also gaining direct access to
new sites, but that happens regardless of how we approach this hurdle)


Thomas Dalton writes:
> The only situation where there is going to be a problem is moving
> content from a wiki that doesn't convert to a Wikimedia wiki. Going
> the other way will be fine in most cases, most Wikimedia content will
> be dual licensed.

Yes, wikipedia will continue to dual license for as long as this is
possible.  This will help GFDL-only projects dependent on Wikipedia
benefit from future edits for as long as possible, but it will only
last so long.  Once CC-BY-SA content is merged into an article, future
revisions of the article are BY-SA only.  Within a couple of years,
Wikipedia will be basically a BY-SA project (with a historical
snapshot still available under GFDL).  Third parties should not be
fooled into thinking that this finesse is equivalent to being a
dual-licensed project forever.  If they don't switch now, they will
not have the chance to do so in the future.


geni writes:
> Not much. Not many active third party GFDL projects so it is unlikely
> that there will significant amounts of new GFDL content produced in
> future and most existing stuff of interest has long since been
> imported.

A quick look at the recentchanges of the 18 large wikis listed on the
outreach page will show you that it's not true that "most existing
stuff of relevance has long been imported" -- these are active
communities, each working in their own world; which sporadically draw
from Wiki[p]edia and from which we slightly more sporadically draw in
return.

I am surprised you (of all people :) have such faith in the horde or
importers.  I was looking at the glorious media and high-res source
text scans at wdl.org yesterday, and could not find a single piece of
that public domain media that was already on Commons and used in the
obvious Wikipedia article / on its own Wikisource page.  Maybe I
wasn't looking in the right place... but that's a month after a global
publicity blitz.


On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:16 AM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> as long as they convert /before/ the deadline...

Exactly.    And there are some energetic new projects such as Medpedia
that are just getting off the ground, with enthusiastic new authors
and a constellation of supporters... they'd probably love to convert,
but need someone to explain this to them in time for them to work
through their own red tape.

SJ


> 2009/5/27 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>> 2009/5/27 Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com>:
>>> Thanks for circulating this.
>>>
>>> Not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy here, but I suspect that 90%
>>> or more of those affected by this issue will not care or will not
>>> understand the urgency, and they will not do anything, either on their
>>> own sites or on-wiki. What are the practical implications of this if
>>> nothing happens and little attention is paid by anyone?
>>
>> The only situation where there is going to be a problem is moving
>> content from a wiki that doesn't convert to a Wikimedia wiki. Going
>> the other way will be fine in most cases, most Wikimedia content will
>> be dual licensed. If every Wikimedian that takes content off other
>> wikis (how many of those are there?) goes to those wikis and
>> recommends they convert, then we should be ok.
>>
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