[WikiEN-l] Citizendium's assertions about material from Wikipedia

[Jake Nelson]

On 4/14/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> Is this the case? Are editors "licensing their edits to WP and
> retaining copyright"?
>
> -- Jossi

(IANAL, TINALO)
They're releasing them under the GFDL as a non-exclusive license and
retaining any copyright they hold on them. No license is granted to
Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation specifically that is not granted
to anyone who honors the terms of the GFDL.

(Some users (including myself) also specifically grant the Wikimedia
Foundation a non-exclusive license to their contributions, and others
release their contributions into the public domain, but these are
things those editors do with their copyrights themselves, and do not
occur by default.)

If someone contributes something to Wikipedia, they can post their
contribution anywhere else they want, and need not credit anyone or
follow the GFDL. If they modified or co-contributed to something that
comes from Wikipedia, that content is usable only under the GFDL,
which requires attribution of the authors (and while it's nice,
crediting Wikipedia is neither necessary to do so nor does it count as
doing so, though linking to Wikipedia's article history is usually
(IIRC) considered to do so) and that its derivative works be licensed
under the GFDL (and a few other things that are less relevant).

Others will, I'm sure, correct me if any of that's incorrect.

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]