[Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view

[Mike Godwin]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> As Wikipedia is becoming more and more a regular part of our
> civilization, we may expect more and more regular behavior. We already
> had malicious legal attacks in UK, Germany and France (I remember
> those three issues).


I'm aware of these, and other legal threats as well.

By building a position with significant holes, and attribution issue
> is still a significant hole, we are making unsustainable construction.


My assessment is different from yours.

>
> If we have, let's say, 10.000.000 of contributors and 1% of them
> (100.000) is not happy with Wikipedia because of any reason and 1% of
> them (1000) want to sue WMF or whoever and 1% of them can do it, we'll
> have 10 big problems. We may fail in just 10% of the cases and we'll
> suffer from significant consequences.


This is a version of Pascal's Wager.  I don't really believe, however, the
risk is even as high as you suggest here.  We'll be fine.



> After the first couple of such processes Wikipedia
> recommendations would loose any credibility.


I don't consider this a significant risk.


> BUT, if you think that there is no reasonable threat to be sued for
> "misleading recommendations", it doesn't cost a lot to try that way.
> Fixing credibility is much less dangerous than loosing two years
> budget.


I don't think there's any reasonable threat of this sort.


--Mike