[Textbook-l] Citizendium License (Was: [EWW] EditWikipediaWeek)

[Florence Devouard]

Brian McNeil wrote:
> I agree completely, there would be a lot of work putting templates in the
> right places. For Wikinews every article written before the changeover had
> to have a template added.
> 
> Assuming Wikibooks were to say they wanted to change license you'd have a
> big project on your hands because people wouldn't want their GFDL stuff to
> become frozen in time and cease being edited. If they accepted the reasons
> for the license change you'd be rewriting your books to put them under the
> new license.
> 
> Wikibooks could make a switch, but it would be a real challenge. I can
> imagine having some pages started before the cut off having warning
> templates that contributions are GFDL but there's a
> start-from-scratch-and-rewrite version under CC-BY-2.5 [[here]]. Tricky
> judgement call on when you switch the main article with the sub-page and
> move to a template that says "This book is CC-BY-2.5, an older version under
> the GFDL license is available [[here]]." This may sound overly complex, but
> in line with Wiki philosophy I hate seeing useful information destroyed.
> 
> Of course, I am unaware of any drive within Wikibooks to change the license.
> I guess what I and several other people on the list are saying it is they
> are the only obvious case that could pull the same move as Wikinews. And
> yes, it would be a disruptive, difficult and messy period for the project.
> 
> 
> Brian McNeil
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray
> Sent: 21 November 2007 13:34
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Citizendium License (Was: [EWW]
> EditWikipediaWeek)
> 
> On 21/11/2007, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:
> 
>> Were you, for example, to want to go that way with Wikibooks you'd need to
>> say, okay cut-off is <date-A>, and every book started before that gets a
>> template added saying it was started before <date-A>, thus remains under
> the
>> GFDL.
>>
>> I can't see any way to do that on Wikipedia where virtually every article
> is
>> treated as a work in progress.
> 
> Quite - even were you to try saying "all articles created after Date X
> are License A, all articles created before are License B", you'd
> immediately run into trouble with people wanting to merge or transfer
> material across.
> 
> It really depends on how granular the projects are - how much each
> page or group of pages stands on their own. It seems like this ought
> to be workable for Wikibooks, to deem that this book is CC-BY and that
> one GFDL...
> 
> ...*but* even if it is theoretically practical, it's going to be a
> hellishly big headache to administrate!
> 
> Licenses are really something that needs to be established on a
> project-wide level, I fear.


Let me push the thing a step further Brian

Imagine that there is already a book somewhere, under a regular 
copyright. And the copyright holder is willing to have this book 
published on Wikibooks, because he thinks it is a cool idea, because he 
wants the book to be under a free license, because he wants to be the 
book to be regularly updated and so on.

Does the current situation mean that this person has to mandatorily 
relicense the book under GFDL, a license we notoriously know as 
problematic, whilst other licenses may be more suitable now ?
Does he have the possibility to relicense it under a dual gfdl/CC-by-sa 
licence ? What are the implications in Wikibooks today ?

Ant