[WikiEN-l] Citizendium trying out not being a fork of Wikipedia for a while

[Sage Ross]

On 1/18/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/18/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> >
> > Matt R wrote:
> > > As per the subject, excerpts from:
> > >
> > >
> > https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
> > >
> > > Larry Sanger writes,
> > >
> > >   "After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion
> > > that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
> > that
> > > are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
> > ahead
> > > and make the deletion...
> >
> > I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia
> > content, or that they have but they're hiding it?  I mean, all the
> > articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content?
> >   And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL?
> >   Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning
> > to do?
> >
> > Steve block
>
>
> Steve - if you poke around the Citizendium forum (there's a link to it in
> Matt's email) a lot of your questions may be answered.
>
> Apparently their first "approved" article, Biology, was a complete re-write
> - the Wikipedia article was blanked.  Other people have modified existing
> articles.  As I understand it, the CZ Live stuff is stuff that people are
> working on.
>
> Obviously they can't release work based on WP articles under a more
> restrictive license.  New material could be - it seems to me that there's a
> debate between people who want the whole project to by cc-by-nc and those
> who want it to stay GFDL.  It's certainly understandable that people would
> want their work to be only available for non-commercial uses - it's hard to
> think that people are using your work to make money.  Of course I believe
> that there are good arguments for GFDL, otherwise I wouldn't be contributing
> to Wikipedia, but NC appeals to me as well.
>
> Ian

Hopefully they will at least dual license with GFDL if they go the CC
route and start all new content.  It seems like cutting themselves off
from Wikipedia (especially, the transfer of content from CZ to WP) is
a good way to shoot themselves in the foot.  I don't see what a more
restrictive license gains them, aside from more freedom with fair use
images.  However, I think some of the Live content did start from
Wikipedia articles (correct me if I'm wrong).

It seems like a stretch to describe the forum discussion about the
possible non-forking as "indicating broad support" (as Sanger does in
the Citizendium blog announcement of the non-forking experiment).
Meh.  Not my problem.

-Sage