[Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

[mike.lifeguard]

Using a template on each page is a step in the right direction, but it is
still questionable whether that is acceptable legally. /Assuming it is/,
other issues arise. What if we want to move a page into the book? That page
is not dual-licensed (or maybe & this is what Andrew was getting at --
licensed in some totally different way) and so ruins the dual licensing for
the whole book. Furthermore, Wikibooks is openly advertised as being
GFDL(-only) - mediawiki.org is openly advertised as having a PD Help:
namespace. For them, the problems raised by moving content around isn't
really relevant, as the help pages stand alone. But for us, it raises huge
logistical concerns.

My biggest problem here is that we cannot force anyone to license their work
under anything but the GFDL. So if someone doesn't want to also use cc-by-sa
or PD or whatever, we can't say "Then you may not contribute to this book"

Wikibooks is for GFDL-licensed textbooks - I understand the rationale for
expanding that, but I think it may cause more problems than it solves. That
said, I'd love to see effort put into methods of doing this properly (ie not
repeating the probably-invalid attempts of the past)

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: textbook-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:textbook-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brianna Laugher
Sent: August 14, 2008 11:06 PM
To: Wikimedia textbook discussion
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

Hm...

I recently took part in a FLOSS Manuals Inkscape documentation
booksprint. Since my Inkscape knowledge is nothing special, I wrote a
guide to contributing to Wikimedia Commons, in theory the manual being
for people who were already familiar with Inkscape but not Wikimedia.
<http://en.flossmanuals.net/wikimediacommons>

FLOSS Manuals is by default GPL. I asked for this manual to be
dual-licensed with the GFDL so that its contents could be copied to a
Wikimedia wiki if desired.

I was thinking I should copy the whole thing to Wikibooks as a book,
but I wouldn't want to do that if the content couldn't be fed back
into FLOSS Manuals (which has a wiki-to-print process that actually
works, *now*).

GFDL did not win the free license race. It seems to me if you cut off
dual licensing you are cutting off a lot of potential partnerships.

Is it so bad if you just put a template on each page of the book
stating its dual license?
This is what http://mediawiki.org does, which has a namespace of help
docs which are PD, and intended to be exported with every wiki. All
the rest is GFDL which just stays at mediawiki.org. See
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:PD_Help_Page>

cheers
Brianna
[[user:pfctdayelise]]

-- 
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/

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