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

[geni]

2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back
> credit aren't irreconcilable after all.

Well I suppose that confirms you haven't really been paying attention.

> Now we're apparently moving on
> to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining
> what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time
> on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from
> every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use.

I assume you are trying to claim that wikipedia:copyrights is some
kind of TOS equiv.

Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canale_artificiale
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanal
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_County,_West_Virginia
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB_(%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F)
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaal_(waterweg)

> But
> even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't
> support rigorous author attribution:
>
> 1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
> edits under the GFDL;
> 2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
> give credit on the page title;
> 3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;

Strangely there is no requirement that the history and the title page
not be the same thing.

> 4) The act of repeatedly contributing to Wikipedia under the GFDL can
> be argued to constitute the release from attribution which the GFDL
> allows for.

Please provide the section you think allows for it.

>
> The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
> attribution, as I've noted before. That's evident because the GFDL
> explicitly places reasonable limitations on the extent of author
> credit, to prevent the kinds of excessive bylines that we've been
> talking about.

Questionable. The GFDL is quite happy to see the title page extend
over several pages.

>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
> created without a page history while still giving author credit.

However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
history is required to include "new authors" among other things.

> In
> the context of a wiki, change histories were clearly not designed for
> purposes of author credit, as they are an incredibly annoying tool
> when you actually want to use them for this purpose.

The exception being if you want to use them in the context of the GFDL
which has a similar bunch of annoying requirements for it's history
section.

> I'm not making this argument:

Then please don't waste bandwidth with it.

>I am saying that we have established,
> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.

False. Look up history merging sometime.

>What is
> and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license. But the
> experience of contributing under a literal reading of the license
> alone doesn't support a claim to require stronger author attribution
> than what we're proposing, or even any author attribution at all.

Please state which section of the GFDL you are referring to here. I'm
fed up with playing guessing games.


-- 
geni