[Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

Fri Aug 15 13:20:06 UTC 2008

Looking at the scratch book in particular, I note that there is not a
template on every page, which would be the bare minimum required.
Furthermore, even if there were a template on each page, you would still
need some explicit agreement to the other license. The edit form still says
that the edit is being submitted under the GFDL - unless the user has made a
statement elsewhere stating otherwise, then /it is/ being submitted under
the GFDL (only).

For example, Kevin k's contributions
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kevin_k) don't seem to
me to be dual-licensed. What we /do/ know is that they are GFDL-licensed.
The best we can do in that case is to say that /certain revisions/ of each
page of the book (which in some cases may be all revisions, including the
top revision) are dual-licensed.

I'm not against mutli-licensing (indeed, I multi-license where I can because
the GFDL is kinda sucky) but I am against doing so in a legally questionable
manner.

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 15, 2008 6:09 AM
To: textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Dual-licensed wikibooks

Mike.lifeguard wrote: 	

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

------

I think the reason "we have no acceptable method" of dual-licensing is just
because you aren't thinking big enough on it.  I don't see any sort of legal
reason why you have to obligate any edit on the wiki with any sort of
license, including the GFDL, other convention and project/website policy.
On this basis, requiring users to add contributions with dual-licenses is
identical in nature to requiring just the GFDL alone anyway.  It really is
the same thing.

I'm also curious about "Past attempts have unfortunately failed"?  What
attempts are you talking about here?  I know that some individual users have
attempted to have *ALL* of their edits dual-licensed by noting such actions
on their user page, as if by doing so would somehow change the license of
the content.  In a few cases I've seen some projects that have taken
Wikibooks content and have tried to switch from the GFDL to another content
license after the fact... something which is even being tried (and
apparently has failed to happen) by the WMF itself.  But that isn't what is
being talked about here.

All it would take is for the website policy to permit dual-licensing of the
content, and to enforce the concept that any dual-licensed content that is
clearly marked as such would also have to be dual-licensed.  The Scratch
wikibook is one example of a dual-licensed content that IMHO is marked...
perhaps even to an extreme point as I've put the dual licensing "warning" on
nearly ever page of the book.  If site policy is such that "forking" isn't
permitted *within* the website in such cases to be GFDL-only, I fail to see
what the real problem is here.

What users do with that content outside of the website can't be controlled,
including forks.  But that doesn't matter as what is being discussed here is
policy internal to the website.

BTW, Andrew, this still gives an "even landscape" for content, as all of it
is still available under the GFDL under these sorts of guidelines.  I accept
that the GFDL is one of the licenses that ought to be mandatory.  If you
inadvertently take some dual-licensed content and act as if the GFDL is the
only license, you haven't broken copyright.  I agree that the dual-licensed
content issue is a bit more complicated in terms of administration, but I
don't think it is really all that much more complicated.

This is also a huge difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia.  On the
'pedia, it is intended to be one continuous publication, where an individual
article having different licensing terms from the rest of the "book" would
prove to be unworkable.  In this case with Wikibooks, individual books can
be unitized and treated somewhat independently.  I've been an advocate for
some time of individual wikibook autonomy, even to the point of perhaps
having slightly contrary policies to the main Wikibooks project itself that
don't go against primary pillar policies like NPOV or GFDL requirements.
This perception is one of the reasons why Wikibooks in the past has been
used as a project incubator for a great many Wikimedia projects, such as
Wikiversity.

I'm just afraid that this is one more way that Wikibooks is being sterilized
and unduely straight-jacketed with a policy that excludes content rather
than trying to find a way to accommodate such creative expressions in a
fashion that can both help the contributors as well as allow Wikibooks to
grow.  Far too much content has been tossed overboard with Wikibooks and
driving away far too many users.  Please don't do it again!

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