[WikiEN-l] Our content gets *everywhere*

[Anthony]

On 8/23/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/08/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > My goodness the GFDL is a crap license for a wiki ...
> > >
> > > Too late to do anything about that now, though...
> > >
> > Things could be done if the foundation really wanted to do them.
>
> How? The foundation has no power over the copyright of the content of
> Wikipedia. Changing license would require the permission of every
> contributor that hasn't had all their contributions removed. And that
> includes many anonymous contributors, and there is no way we can get
> their permission, since we can't identify them.
>
Changing the license of every article would take a long time, but it
could be done.  Changing a fraction of the articles would be even
easier.

And that's even if you accept your assertion that "Changing license
would require the permission of every contributor that hasn't had all
their contributions removed".

Finally, anonymous contributors don't really have standing to
challenge most of the problematic parts of the GFDL.  They're
anonymous, so they can't sue you for not putting their name on the
title page or in the section entitled history.