[Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

[Wouter Vanden Hove]

Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are
needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from
now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.

The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero:
1) Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the
future and know what will be necessary then. 
2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility, 
3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the
European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft
licences.
4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation
effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be
stated in the official languages of the country.


Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from
anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This
is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the
possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous
contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an
impossibility. 
 
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
in a free and open copyleft spirit.

For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing
need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the
possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.

What dou you think?



Wouter Vanden Hove
www.open-education.org
www.opencursus.be

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