[WikiEN-l] using wikipedia content to seed a social startup

[Fred Bauder]

It is only the articles which have been imported from Wikipedia which must remain under the GFDL. They may be modified by users or in an automatic way, as you put it.

What you do with respect to the original content of your own users is between you and them, however if you offer Wikipedia content to them to modify that must remain under the GFDL.

You can install an extension which makes a <protect> tag effective. If you use that for the Wikipedia material you could have editing on the same page for your users which was not covered by the GFDL. However, if they copy portions of the Wikipedia material and then begin editing it, you are back to the GFDL.

Fred

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Amir Michail [mailto:amichail at gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 04:47 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] using wikipedia content to seed a social startup
>
>Hi,
>
>I was wondering whether it would be ok to use wikipedia content to
>seed a social startup so that there is initially some compelling
>content to attract users.
>
>If so, what implications would this have with respect to complying
>with the GFDL?
>
>Must user contributions then be under the GFDL also? What if I kept
>user contributions distinct from the wikipedia content?  But what
>should "distinct" mean in this case? Can they be right beside each
>other just as long as wikipedia content is clearly marked as from
>wikipedia?
>
>Note also that users may designate some of their contributions to be
>private and so such contributions cannot be covered by the GFDL, even
>though such contributions may appear beside wikipedia content for
>those users.
>
>Is it possible to use a different license for user contributions even
>though they might be mingled with wikipedia content (but again,
>wikipedia content would be clearly designated as such)?
>
>Finally, do I need to provide some export feature for the wikipedia
>content?  What if some modifications have been made to the wikipedia
>content in a (mostly) automated way?
>
>Amir
>
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