[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Please HELP save Wikipedia history ! (urgent)

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2010/2/20 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
> On 20 February 2010 19:14, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2010/2/20 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>>> On 20 February 2010 05:54, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Yes. This is idiotic. The logo contest followed the same rules as all other
>>>> submissions to Wikipedia -- they were submitted under the GFDL.
>>>
>>> Evidence?
>>> --
>>
>> Evidence of what? At the beginning on all Wikipedias as well as meta
>> there were no license templates at all. It was just assumed that all
>> original content is under GNU FDL - both text and pictures. The idea
>> of license templates for media files was created to provide
>> possibility to use pictures on other free licenses and those which are
>> public domain. Following the copyright paranoia in such the manner you
>> could ask if there is any evidence that articles in Wikipedia are
>> legally under GNU FDL / CC-BY-SA. Do we have any evidence that users
>> agreed for the license conditions?  How many of them read the
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use ? And how many of
>> those who read Terms of Use followed the links to the licenses legal
>> code or at least general explanation of their practical consequences ?
>> In case of text content it is simply assumed with no evidence at all
>> that editors agreed. Moreover even if the uploader to Commons chooses
>> the license in upload form do we check if he/she knows and understand
>> its conditions? So, it is all assumed with no evidence at all.
>> Strange?
>
> The logo contest was specificaly non standard with copyrights not
> being released so that the logo copyright could be held exclusively by
> the foundation. The various wikimedia logos (except the mediawiki one)
> are not under a free license.
>

Evidence? :-) Is there any formal document of Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees which says, that logo candidates are a special case
for copyright issues or it is just your assumption? If not, one can
say that at that time it was assumed on meta that everything uploaded
is under GNU FDL. Therefore we have one assumption vs. the other
assumption. The other story is if Foundation could legally revoke
assumed GNU FDL license of winning logo to register it as a trademark
and ask the author to transfer copyright exclusively to Foundation.
This is a kind of legal "Gordian Knot" :-) as one can assume that in
such a case Wikimedia logo is still under GNU FDL or it is all illegal
:-) GNU FDL cannot be canceled, it is for ever, isn't it :-)

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html