[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia-Specific License?

[Simon Kissane]

AxelBoldt raises a number of requirements under the
GNU Free Documentation License, such as the
requirement to preserve lists of five most significant
contributors (how could we ever judge that for
Wikipedia? we wouldn't even want to), change the title
of a new document, etc. Many of these things don't fit
too well with Wikipedia.

The FDL was not really designed for a purpose such as
Wikipedia. It was designed for programming manual
documentation. It was designed for an environment with
a small number of individual authors, dealing with a
relatively stable work, where different versions are
clearly distinguishable. The FDL was designed for an
environment were acknowledgement of individual
authorship and the identity of the work is essential,
but it was felt necessary to permit later authors to
modify the work in order to ensure it does not fall
out of date. Wikipedia, by contrast, has no clear
individual authorship, lacks a clear identity as a
work, and 'Modified Versions' are being created
constantly. Its a different paradigm, a different
method of production, and a license designed for one
paradigm doesn't fit a significantly different one
that well.

In some ways I think that the GNU GPL would be a much
better license for Wikipedia. Many of the additional
requirements that the FDL has over the GPL aren't
really relevant to Wikipedia. The GPL doesn't permit
requiring even collective acknowledgement, but as I
have argued I don't think the machinery of the FDL
license can handle the kind of acknowledgement
requirement we probably want.

The FDL allows the author to require the inclusion of
specific invariant sections. But when we want to
require acknowledgement, what is important is the
substance of the acknowledgement and its prominence,
not its exact reproduction (though as I have said,
exactly how exact a reproduction is required is
unclear.)

(On a sidepoint: Jimbo says he can't see how putting
the invariant section on a different page could comply
with the FDL. The FSF, which produced the FDL, creates
its manuals using texinfo. Texinfo documents, when
converted into HTML format, generally have a separate
page for each section or subsection. So, if we can
take the authors of the license as a guide, the
invariant section can be on a separate page, so long
as it is part of the same document, say by being
linked from a Table of Contents.)

Which is why I would creating a separate license for
Wikipedia, based on the FDL but with modifications to
fit Wikipedia's special conditions. Among other
things, I would delete the requirement for invariant
sections, and the stuff to do with "Endorsements",
"Acknowledgements", "Dedications", lists of authors,
renaming modified versions, etc. But I would add a
specific requirement to provide acknowledgement, with
some broad guidelines.

To get this new license we could simply modify the GNU
FDL. While the license for the license doesn't permit
modifications, I'm sure RMS would give us permission
if we explained why we wanted to do this, and called
it something else.

Two other issues remain. One is compatibility with FDL
documents being used in Wikipedia. Since the terms of
the license I am proposing are incompatible with the
FDL, since they don't require things that the FDL
does, and do require things that the FDL doesn't. Of
course, if the author gave permission this wouldn't be
a problem. But still, that would be different from the
current (informal) policy, which seems to permit any
FDL or other "Open Content" material to be added.

But I am unsure how much such material has been added,
and I question the legal adivisability of permitting
such material to be added, even if we continued to
distribute under the FDL. The FDL provides several
specific requirements for reproduction, which I doubt
anyone who has added such content has paid specific
attention to; and even if they did, as I have pointed
out many of these requirements (e.g. invariant
sections -- how possibly could anything in a Wikipedia
article be invariant?) don't really fit with
Wikipedia. And other "Open Content" licenses add their
own requirements as well. Since licenses can be quite
complex and can often impose conflicting terms, I
don't think it is advisable to let people add
copyrighted material of any sort, without specific
permission from the copyright holder.

The other issue is that people who have already
submitted their content have done so on the
understanding that it will be redistributed under the
FDL, and might not agree to having it redistributed
under another license. This raises quite a legal
conundrum. The only thing I can suggest is, that if
sufficent consensus arises in the Wikipedia community
on a license change, we widely publicise the license
change, allow anyone who does not want their material
to be distributed under that license object, and
consider those who do not object as consenting to
having their material distributed under the new
license.

I think that, rather than just creating a notice below
the submit button, we should provide a proper terms
and conditions notice, which should include that the
author consents to redistribution under the terms of
the license, or any later modifications of the license
or replacement license which may be agreed upon by the
Wikipedia community. Of course if we had a "any later
modifications or replacement license" clause, we'd
need to find some way for the will of the Wikipedia
community to be expressed (how about a Wikipedia
council? Wikipedia referenda? Wikipedia elections?).

And of course, any such new Wikipedia license or
Wikipedia terms and conditions of use should be
discussed and achieve wide consensus in the Wikipedia
community, before being put into practice. (I suppose
that Jimbo, since he owns the Wikipedia website, could
just produce his own terms and conditions of use
without consultation and impose us on it all. But I
trust he won't.)

Anyway, that is my latest thinking on the Wikipedia
licensing issue. I'm also going to add this on
Wikipedia commentary under Wikipedia, so people who
don't subscribe to Wikipedia-L can read/comment on it.

Simon J Kissane



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