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

[Anthony]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 8:42 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> > There's no reason to assume that they are.
>
> Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
> has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
> accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page
>

That's one way to look at it.  A more sane way would be that wikipedians
have collaborated on a number of documents which they agree to release to
third parties under the GFDL.

>The GFDL defines Title Page
> > as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
> > preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
> > that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
> > be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
> > exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
> > 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
> > interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
> > Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.
>
> Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
> think you are helping your case.


Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was blasted for saying this.  However, I don't see
how you can honestly claim otherwise.  Wikipedia doesn't follow the GFDL,
and never has.  On the other hand, that doesn't excuse third parties from
not following the GFDL.

Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
> to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.


At least it's honest.