From: "David Merrill" david@lupercalia.net ...
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Absolutely. Require that text at the bottom of each page, then?
Something like that. I'd like to get to that soon. I think I'd like to find some plausible way to leave the exact wording open. The only disputed issue of any significance, I believe, is whether we will require a link back to the actual article URL on Wikipedia. I know there's been a lot of resistance to that, but it's really important, if we're going to get a lot of new contributors, that people be able to find the original article quickly and easily.
If I decide I want to do something slightly different, can I approach you with my proposal? I suggest you state in the copyright and GFDL implementation text that you can be approached for special situations. No general solution is going to work for everyone.
Yes. Good point.
Does Bomis hold official copyright on Wikipedia?
Yes, more or less. I'm not sure what that means. I'll leave it to Jimbo to articulate a position on that, which I believe he might already have done.
I didn't see it on the site.
And that's another problem we need to rectify. :-( It's just a matter of getting it right and getting around to it.
You really should post a copyright notice on the main page, directly, which includes the implementation of the license in it.
That's my understanding too.
I am concerned that you run into a violation of the *spirit* of the GFDL, if not the precise letter, if you require some large or intrusive attribution on derivative works that doesn't exist on the live Wikipedia pages. In my case especially, since it isn't really a `derivative work' but just a downstream packaging of Wikipedia content, as it were.
Maybe it would help, in some way, to include the notice on each Wikipedia page, indeed; that might remove some of the objections people have.
Hopefully, given my track record of unpaid volunteer work for the Linux Documentation Project, and now some fair amount of unpaid volunteer work for the Wikipedia, you know that I'm not a money grubber who is trying to take advantage of Wikipedia or Bomis. I want to see you get fair attribution. My goals, in large part, are your goals. I want you to succeed. However, I also want the maximum flexibility in how I attribute you, within reasonable parameters of course. Your suggestion here sounds like something I can live with.
Good!
I've also decided definitely that all Wikipedia content that is packaged beside the LDP documents in Linux distributions will contain a live linkback to directly edit the page. That could easily bring a million Linux users to Wikipedia every month. More if you count the local page views. That is a good thing for Wikipedia and for Linux.
No kidding, that would be fantastic.
Please give me your views or guidelines on how I might approach this effort. My goal is to start having Wikipedia content used as part of Linux help, but I don't want to move the LDP over wholesale (and it would be rude to my authors, even those who GFDL'ed), nor do I want to simply leech. I'm just knocking around ideas right now, so if you can suggest any I should consider I'd appreciate hearing them.
Well, I'm not sure what else you need other than our recommended wording, whatever it will be.
I will be formatting the output differently from Wikipedia, though. I will make the output look as similar as I can to the other documents. I have to merge man pages, html, and docbook documents, and it is a challenge to make the presentation of all those documents seamless across format, but that's what I'm trying to do. I want the transition to and from Wikipedia pages within the Linux documentation database to be similarly seamless. I'll attribute Wikipedia pages, and probably put up a logo for graphical browser users.
Sounds groovy.
I will run the final stylesheets past you once I get to that point. Live release in actual Linux distributions is probably six months away, so there is no hurry. I promise to be very amenable to following your suggestions, as long as you keep in mind that the user experience comes first in my page layout philosophy!
Well, it has *never* been our desire to ask anyone to do anything that would make the user experience less than optimal. (I happen to think that clearly-presented information about the source of an article definitely enhances the user experience--but not, necessarily, in the form of even a small table banner.)
Thanks for resolving this issue quickly. It really is fundamental and the sooner you resolve it, the better for everyone. Then it becomes a non-issue and we can all get back to work where we should be. :-)
Sorry it wasn't sooner! I should have read this sooner, or I would have seen that it is really high priority.
Larry
Regards,
-- Dr. David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net Linux Documentation Project david@lupercalia.net Collection Editor & Coordinator http://www.linuxdoc.org
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