[Wikipedia-l] The case against "invariant sections"

Jimmy Wales jwales at bomis.com
Fri Jun 21 15:20:23 UTC 2002


To shock the community:  I agree with this.  I am inclined to remove the invariant sections
requirement.

Are there licensing difficulties with so doing?


Axel Boldt wrote:

> Currently, we require an "invariant section", which means that anybody
> has to put a specifically formatted HTML table on every page that
> uses Wikipedia materials, asking people to contribute to Wikipedia.
> (See below (*) for the rather messy details.)
> 
> Here, I want to argue that we should abandon this invariant section.
> 
> The FOLDOC computing dictionary has been licenced to us under GFDL
> without invariant sections. We have incorporated many articles from
> them. Two weeks ago, somebody asked me whether the material from our
> TeX article (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/TeX), which was originally
> based on FOLDOC's but has since grown considerably, could be
> reintegrated into FOLDOC. The answer is: only if they put our
> Wikipedia table into the FOLDOC entry, which they are unlikely to do
> because it doesn't really fit with their article formatting.
> 
> There is a new, exciting and fast growing math encyclopedia at
> http://planetmath.org; everything is licensed under GFDL without
> invariant sections, and can therefore be used by us without problems
> (while acknowledging the source, as we do for FOLDOC articles). I
> haven't copied anything over yet, but I'm sure I will in the future.
> People have asked me whether they could take Wikipedia materials and
> post them on PlanetMath. For articles that I have written exclusively
> myself, and there aren't many, this is no problem. For others, the
> Wikipedia invariant table is required, which pretty much excludes them
> because of the site's particular layout.
> 
> These are two examples of the fledgling open content movement that's
> growing right now. We are currently the clear leader of this movement,
> but we are not playing very nicely. If everybody required their own
> invariant sections, cooperation and exchange would become almost
> impossible. I believe that this movement is ultimately even more
> important than Wikipedia. We should do everything to foster it, if
> only out of self-interest.
> 
> Even without an invariant section, the GFDL requires proper
> attribution of all materials. Rather than fretting over the possible
> evil schemes of big bad corporations, why not apply wiki principles:
> trust that people are basically good, and that the more freedoms you
> give them, the better the outcomes will be.
> 
> Axel
> 
> ----
> (*) The invariant section requirement is alluded to in
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/GNU+Free+Documentation+License, but no
> link is given. http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia:copyright
> contains a "draft" which explicitly disputes an invariant section. The
> invariant section requirement used to be contained in the uneditable
> file http://www.wikipedia.com/license/fdl.html but that has ceased to
> exist after the software change. It can still be viewed at
> http://web.archive.org/web/20011112090138/http://www.wikipedia.com/license/fdl.html.
> The invariant sections, or "linkbacks" have been defended by Jimbo and
> Larry in several Wikipedia-l messages in October 2001:
> http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/date.html 
> 
> 
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