On 6/11/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene(a)vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
David Mestel schreef:
No history section is required, technically, if a
Document is written and
then distributed only as a verbatim copy, but that's not the case with a
Wikipedia article.
With "history section", you mean a section describing the history of the
page? The GFDL does not discuss such a section.
Instead, it specifies a 'section Entitled "History"', which is defined
as "a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely
[History] or contains [History] in parentheses following text that
translates [History] in another language." The original content of this
section is irrelevant to the license; only the title matters.
An example of such a section Entitled "History" is for example
[[London#History]]. If you create a derived work of [[London]], you have
to include that section, and add your name to it (presumably under
===Rise of modern London===). And if you consider Wikipedia to be one
document, you have to add your own name to [[History]], when
republishing it.
That's a prima facie misinterpretation of the GFDL. The "section" it
is referring to is obviously a Secondary Section: "a named appendix or
a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the
relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the
Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains
nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus,
if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary
Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a
matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political
position regarding them."