[Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

[mike.lifeguard]

The problem is that there is normally no proof that a certain user has
agreed to dual-license their work. You can /say/ that something is
GFDL/CC-by-sa but that doesn't make it so. You actually have to get people
to explicitly agree to it, which I have not seen done in a satisfactory way.
By "satisfactory" I really mean "legally acceptable" - this is not some
arbitrary requirement I have invented.

Since that's the case, removing notices that a book is dual-licensed is
perfectly legitimate - the book /isn't/ dual-licensed, it just claims to be.
Unless there is proof that all other contributors have agreed to it
explicitly, it is GFDL-only. There may be specific revisions which remain
dual-licensed, but we cannot say with any degree of certainty that the book
itself (ie the current version of all pages in the book) are multi-licensed.

I agree that multi-licensing is a good thing, but it has to be done right.
Currently we have no acceptable method of doing so. Perhaps that will change
in the future. Past attempts have unfortunately failed; if there is a case
which has succeeded, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: textbook-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:textbook-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
robert_horning at netzero.net
Sent: August 14, 2008 8:58 PM
To: textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

I haven't been on this mailing list much, but I do think there is a role and
place for dual-licensed books to be both sought and worked on within the
context of Wikibooks.

One thing that I think is reasonable to ask for is that the GFDL is one of
the licenses that must be included.  I don't think there is any dispute
here.

The problem comes from those editors who decide to contribute to a wikibook,
but for some reason or other explicitly don't want the "dual licensing" to
continue.  A great deal of this can and IMHO should be in some sort of
policy guideline for the project.

There are some book projects that there are some very legitimate reasons for
wanting to continue the dual-license.  We've gone over before some of those
book projects that want to be dual-licensed GPL/GFDL in order to ultimately
include some GPL'd software into the book in some sort of final distro.
I've also seen some books that were to be distributed with other items that
were of some other free-type license (such as CC-by-SA or some other similar
license).  In these cases, maintaining the dual-licensing can be incredibly
useful as we get the benefit of having the free content on Wikibooks, but
the "end users" can also use the content in a completely different context.

I would hope that dual-licensing aren't completely dismissed from Wikibooks,
and I especially would be abhorred by some "administrator" or other user
randomly going through all of the current wikibooks and removing all mention
of any dual-licensing content that currently exists.  Such actions are IMHO
contrary to a wiki spirit and this is something that should receive further
debate... especially if such drastic actions are taking place.  

More to the point, any changes that are irreversible (this is one of those
type of changes) due to Wikibooks policy needs careful consideration.

All this said, the dual-licensing is something that should be decided when
the book is established and is nearly impossible to change once multiple
authors have contributed (in a significant manner) to its contents.

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