[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Ubuntu Wiki to be re-licensed to CC BY-SA]

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

This re-licensing seems even more legally complex than ours (although 
uncontroversial).

Nemo

-------- Messaggio Originale  --------
Oggetto: Ubuntu Wiki to be re-licensed to CC BY-SA
Data: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:39:08 +0000 (UTC)
Da: Ubuntu Community Council
A: undisclosed-recipients:;

Dear Contributor to the Ubuntu Wiki,

We are contacting you because you have contributed content to the Ubuntu 
wiki at http://wiki.ubuntu.com.

The license of content of the Ubuntu Wiki has always been publically 
listed as copyright Canonical Ltd. Working with the Ubuntu Community 
Council, Canonical has decided to transition the content in the Ubuntu 
Wiki to the the CC-BY-SA license[1]. This license is a free culture 
license[2] and is the same license used both by the Ubuntu Documentation 
wiki [3] since 2007 [4] and by Wikipedia.

If you are happy with the idea of this transition for the content you 
have provided, you do not need to do anything. If you have problems or 
issues, please read the feedback section below and contact us.

The rest of this message provides a rationale, details, and information 
on providing feedback.

= Decision =

After discussion among the Ubuntu Community Council, it has been decided 
that the material on the Ubuntu wiki should be licensed under a free 
license, CC-by-SA[1]. The Ubuntu wiki will be changed to make this clear 
to those creating or editing pages, and of course external links from 
the Wiki to material under other licences will continue to be welcome.

This decision is not intended in any way to underestimate the value of 
contributions, but rather to ensure that the material on the wiki 
complies with the same standards of openness as the Ubuntu project as a 
whole.

= Rationale =

The Ubuntu wiki is a collaborative resource, and the product of the 
Ubuntu community as a whole. Its content, put together by many 
contributors with different knowledge and points of view, is immensely 
valuable to us all. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no clear 
definition of what rights contributors to the content retain over the 
material that they post, or the extent to which other persons are 
entitled to copy or modify the material. For example, it would be very 
useful to ensure that community contributed content may be shared by 
many teams without complex licensing issues, ensuring that those working 
on content can concentrate on producing the best information possible 
rather than legal negotiations.

Furthermore, consistent with Ubuntu's philosophy, it is important that 
material created for use on the Ubuntu wiki be available for other 
communities outside ours to benefit from. Using an open license on the 
Ubuntu wiki allows other communities to re-use material which may be 
useful to them under terms which are widely recognised in the free 
software community.

= Feedback =

We would again like to make a good-faith attempt to ensure that 
contributors of existing material are happy with this change. We invite 
any contributors who have any questions or concerns about this plan to 
contact us at <community-council at lists.ubuntu.com>. Given that the 
re-licensing of http://help.ubuntu.com/community was fairly 
uncontroversial and since the aim to re-license the Ubuntu wiki at some 
point later has not brought up any objections, we hope that contributors 
will welcome it.

In the absence of a substantial number of objections, this change will 
be made to the Ubuntu wiki after approximately one month.

More details can be found here:
   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiLicensing

Many thanks for your contributions to the Ubuntu Wiki, and we hope that 
you will continue to help!

= Exceptions =
If you want to license a code snippet on the wiki under another open 
source license [5], please specify the relevant license in the snippet 
itself. In the event that no license is specified, the license 
applicable to the code snippet would be the same as that applicable to 
any other material on the wiki.

[1] See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[2] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
[3] http://help.ubuntu.com
[4] 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-April/000275.html
[5] http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses