Delirium wrote in part:
Well, the GFDL doesn't actually require that the original work be provided at all; only that the derived work itself be provided in "transparent" form. With normal text this just means that you have to provide the derived work; with wiki-text, since "transparent" is derived as the wiki-markup version, someone who makes an HTML/ASCII/whatever derived work would have to provide the wiki-text, which is sometimes onerous to make them do.
Since HTML and ASCII are themselves transparent (at least HTML is unless you deliberately obscure it), how do you know that part of the derivation process wasn't to translate the soure from PediaWiki to HTML? Then they just have to provide the HTML of the derived work -- which is exactly what their HTTP server does.
OTC, the link back to Wikipedia is required, as I understand it, to give /credit/ for the work, which the GFDL also insists upon. It could be avoided by copying all of the credit info to the new site (which might include copying contact info from user pages, I'm not sure). Simpler just to link back to Wikipedia.
-- Toby