[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia-Specific License?

[Vicki Rosenzweig]

At 04:03 AM 10/26/01 -0700, Simon Kissane wrote:
<snip>
>
>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'm unsure of how valid this is, legally or ethically: but I Am
Not A Lawyer.

More to the point, perhaps, I'm not sure it's feasible: even a short
Wikipedia article may have been worked on by a dozen people.
How would this change work if (numbering the contributors by
time), everyone *except* contributors 3, 7, 9, and 12 consented?
We might be able to back up to the version before the last changes
(by person 12), but is it even possible to remove the contributions
of people 3, 7, and 9?

That said, I think Simon's points about the FDL are valid: I'm just
not sure we have a good way of addressing them, given 15,000+
articles created under the terms of that license.