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

[Sue Gardner]

I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)

Jussi said he's only seen comments on the licensing issue from the staff, and not from the board. That may be true on this list, and it may be true for the specific piece of the conversation that interests him; I'm not sure.

But I do want to point out two things.

1) At its January meeting, the board developed and unanimously voted to approve, a statement in favour of migration. I think it was included in my January report that was published here on foundation-l a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong and the full statement's not in in that report, let me know and I'll send it to this list. (Or Domas will, or another board member will.)

2) Also at the January board meeting, the board made an explicit request to staff and board members, to publicly speak their minds on this issue.  Some people probably would do that anyway, but the board wanted to explicitly request it in this case.  Why?  Because the license migration issue is pretty complex, and not everyone understands it well.
Basically, people fall into three camps. 1., Those who are already knowledgeable, and have developed a position.  2., Those who aren't yet knowledgeable, but plan to read up in advance of the vote, in order to develop a position. And 3., those who don't plan to read up, and would rather trust others (board, staff, other volunteers) to do the research on their behalf, and to advise them. The board is encouraging knowledgeable staff and board members to express their opinions, as a service for those latter two groups.

That is why you're hearing a lot from Erik and Mike in the license migration threads. Because they're knowledgeable about the issue, and the board has asked them to share what they think :-)

Thanks,
Sue

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:41:58 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com
> wrote:

> The one loud voice here from the foundation *staff* (staff
> mind you, not the board of trustees) was espousing a very
> novel interpretation of the CC-BY-SA that would have quite
> spectacularly failed the "tentacles of evil" test of the Debian
> guidelines.
>

A view which the Creative Commons lawyers themselves have endorsed.

It's fortunate that the motives of this move came out before the decision
was made, because nothing is stopping CC from changing the license later.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l