[WikiEN-l] Knol - Our first major scandel

[Anthony]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:47 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/4/27  <WJhonson at aol.com>:
> > In a message dated 4/27/2009 11:12:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> > saintonge at telus.net writes:
>
> >> Yes, and, absent any agreement to the contrary, any one of those same
> >> authors may grant a free licence.>>
>
> > I'm very suspicious of this claim.
> > If I and seven other own a piece of property, I alone cannot sell it to a
> > prospective buyer.  The same would hold of copyright.  Although each
> owner
> > has a copyright, a single owner cannot grant away the entire right to a
> third
> > party.
>
> It also doesn't sound right from the practices for free software -
> where relicensing is a massive pain in the backside because of the
> need to get agreement from al



> l contributors. Hence the "or later"
> language recommended for the GPL - and the GFDL, hence a mere vote on
> relicensing being possible.
>

Free licenses are generally written from the point of view that
modifications to works constitute derivative works, and not works of joint
authorship.  Either is certainly possible.  The key legal question is
whether the authors intended to collaborate on a single work
(Lennon/McCartney), or if one author created a work which was then modified
by another author (a movie created from a screenplay).

It's by no means clear which better fits what happens on Wikipedia.  I could
see things going either way, but considering the use of the GFDL I'd lean
toward believing that the *intent* of most authors was for each subsequent
edition to be a derivative work, and not a work of joint authorship.  And
that's what matters, the intent of the authors (unfortunately, some authors
probably intended different from other authors).