Alex R.
I should also remind you that everything done on a wiki space IS in writing, the question being who wrote it is a question of proof, but it is written and recorded.
The question before us then is this; can we state on our Wikibooks copyright policy page and on every edit page that by pressing save, that the submitter is agreeing to grant Wikimedia a non-exclusive right to license to use their own unique and copyrightable work under both the GNU FDL /and/ any other copyleft license the Foundation may deem fit in the future (with a defintion of "copyleft" linked from that word)?
Can authors transfer the right re-license their work through a click-through agreement like we have with the "Save page" function, under the narrowly defined terms mentioned, without assigning away all their rights to the work?
Question two: Would such a notice prevent us from using purely FDL work (such as from Wikipedia)?
If the answer to the first question is yes and the second no, then we could have our cake and eat it too; We would be able to swap text to and from Wikipedia and be able to more easily relicense at least some of the content on Wikibooks.
Related question: If the above is true then could we add such a notice to Wikipedia in order to cover all new submissions (we would also have to contact every current and past contributor we could in order to ask them about the change in copyright terms; if they say no or we can't find them their text will only be under the FDL)?
The reason I ask is that some people here see that our content could be even more useful if it also could be used under other licenses similar to the GNU FDL. This would not, however, solve the problem of us being able to use work under other copyleft licenses.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)