[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia.org request use of your modified 1913 dictionary definitions

[Daniel Mayer]

Mr Cassidy,

I'm sorry for the late reply but I've been very busy and had to do some 
asking around to answer some of your questions.

On Tuesday 27 August 2002 05:43 am, you wrote:
> Mr. Mayer,
> Thanks for your inquiry about the modified Webster (copied below).
> To answer the main question, the GCIDE files available on the
> GNU server are freely usable under the GNU GPL.  Since it appears that
> you plan to freely distribute any materials taken from the GCIDE,
> I can't think of any reason why there should be any limit on your
> use of the contents of the GCIDE, or any part of it.  

Unfortunately the GNU FDL and the GNU GPL are not compatible but small 
quotations, particularly if marked as such and cited, 
ought to be acceptable anyway under fair use (so say a couple of our 
contributors that are - one of which specializes in IP law). 

However the version of the modified Webster that I was talking about resides 
at dict.org and that version's only requirement is that permission is needed 
by MICRA in order to use more than 1% of the text. In order for us to use the 
more current GPLd version we would need permission from everybody who has 
contributed to the modified Webster in order to grant Wikipedia permission to 
use their work under terms of the GNU FDL. 

Yeah, I know it is complicated. However, we were just planning on using your 
"first typing" of the Webster located at Dict.org and didn't even know about 
a more up-to-date version (I assume that the version on dict.org is entirely 
your own work under terms of the copyright notice located at: 
http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict3&Database=web1913 ).

> From what I have seen thus far, it seems that there should
> likewise be no impediment to my copying and including any
> relevant articles from Wikipedia into future versions of the
> GCIDE (with references, of course) -- is this correct?

Again the difference in copyright licenses will not allow copying like this 
without permission from copyright owners (it seems odd that the two licenses 
are not compatible...). Theoretically it would be possible for Wikipedia 
contributors to grant you permission to use their work under terms of the GNU 
GPL but due to our development model this is not practical (although we have 
200 regular logged-in contributors who would be more than happy to do this, 
we have thousands of people who have dropped-in and edited articles 
anonymously and are therefore near impossible to track down).  

It might be easier to do it the other way around; have your contributors 
agree to allow Wikipedia to use their work under terms of the GNU FDL. Better 
yet would be to ask them to re-license their work under terms of the FDL (or 
compatible license: 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#DocumentationLicenses - a 
dual license may be possible but I have to ask if a FDL/GPL dual license is 
possible at all). Then the only requirement for either side would be 
mentioning sources and providing link-backs where appropriate (see: 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights ). The GNU FDL is also 
recommended by Richard Stallman for documentation (see: 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html ). 

> The hypertext format of the Wiki differs from the present format of
> the GCIDE, and I would expect only some articles, or quotations
> from them, to be included in GCIDE.  In most cases it would be
> better to just have a reference to one of your pages, where
> appropriate.  I only include parts of materials already on the
> web where the relevant passages form only a small part of an
> article, or I am afraid that the site will disappear soon.

Wikipedia isn't going to go anywhere -- if I have to I will pay for the 
bandwidth and hardware to keep it going. But that won't be necessary any time 
in the forseeable future since Wikipedia is thriving and there are dozens of 
people who would fork over cash to keep us going if need-be.

> ....
>     I will try to look further at Wiki and Nupedia to gain a better
> acquaintance.  If it appears that there are adequate quality controls,
> I may suggest to anyone willing to submit articles to GCIDE that they
> also submit them to the Wiki and/or Nupedia projects.  

That would be great! Our development model may scare you at first; we allow 
anybody to edit any article at any time - without even requiring them to 
log-in. However, there are always a dozen or so regular contributors watching 
all recent edits to pages at 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges in order to guard against 
vandalism and copyright violations or for introduced inaccuracies. Believe it 
or not but this works (any vandal or revisionist quickly gets their "work" 
reverted into nothingness and if they are persistent they get their IP 
blocked -- kinda like painting over graffiti as soon as it is put up). 

Not much has happened with Nupedia in many months. There have been some ideas 
thrown around for Nupedia (which has very rigid standards) to "validate" 
Wikipedia articles and then present them in a distribution that can be 
depended upon by those that don't like Wikipedia's development model.

> I am very
> occupied right now ....

As am I -- sorry again for the late reply.

>     I am also curious as to whether you have explored the possibility
> of submitting any of your articles to the Open Mind project at MIT?

I will have to research this - I've never heard of this project before. 

> The GCIDE, Nupedia, Wikipedia and Open Mind all have the problem
> of getting volunteers to contribute serious effort.  It would be
> good if there were a mechanism to be sure that any such contributed
> effort would be available to all [projects to use, perhaps in
> slightly different ways.

Again - the major issue here is copyrights and incompatible licenses. But I'm 
all for collaboration and have notified our mailing list of these ideas.

>     I am also curious to know how the Wiki project is supported, if
> at all. I have been working on the Webster as a personal effort,
> and it has no financial support from external sources.  Is
> this also true of Wikipedia and Nupedia?

Wikipedia and Nupedia are currently 100% funded by Jim Wales of Bomis 
(http://www.jimmywales.com). He provides the bandwidth, pays for the domains 
and just bought the Wikipedia project a new $3,000 server that is just for 
Wikipedia (all languages). 

However we (Wikipedia) plan on forming a non-profit corporation with paying 
members. Jimbo says that his involvement as benefactor would not change much, 
if at all, under this scenario though. Therefore any membership dues would 
probably be used to start sister projects -- such as hosting complete public 
domain texts that would have links to Wikipedia articles under appropriate 
terms within the text (a dictionary similarly linked - and cross-linked - 
would be a grand thing too). 

>     I'm glad to see at last that there are others trying to get useful
> information organized into a free downloadable encyclopedia-format
> collection on the Web.   Congratulations on your progress so far.
> I am impressed that you have already obtained 40,000 articles --
> are these all recently written by volunteers?

Thanks! I joined the project in early January of this year and at that time 
we had less than 20,000 articles. However we are seriously considering 
revising our article count -- the "40,000" figure include about 10,000 very 
short articles that really are little more than definitions or are 
non-articles that slipped past our current automatic non-article detection 
mechanisms (for more info 
see:http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article ). All of our 
articles are written by volunteers. 

>     I do hope that we can keep in touch and share any resources, so as
> to avoid any unnecessary duplication of effort.  

I do hate duplication of effort too.

Thanks again for you time and energy!

-- Daniel Mayer 

My user page is at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric149 )

PS I have CCd this message to our mailing list so if I didn't get something 
right they will tell me (or maybe even you directly).

>
> ==================
>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am one of the administrators of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia
> > and would like to know if it would be permissable for us to use your
> > online dictionary database as one of our sources for article definitions
> > (this would be done one article at a time where needed). Succinctly
> > defining a term is oftentimes the most difficult thing to do when
> > generating encyclopedia articles from scratch and it is our goal to first
> > define each article before going into detail (creating a hybrid
> > dictionary/encyclopedia -- although we do not encourage covering topics
> > that can only be dictionary
> > entries).
> >
> > All of our contributors and administrators freely donate their spare time
> > in creating encyclopedia articles and these works are licensed under the
> > GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL) which encourages collaboration
> > and the sharing of ideas by ensuring content generated under this license
> > is made forever free for other people to do the same. A copy of GNU FDL
> > license can be accessed at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#TOC2 and
> > a copy of Wikipedia's copyright policy is at
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:copyrights
> >
> > We already have nearly 40,000 articles and I think both Wikipedia and
> > MICRA aim to create something similar given your own stated goals to
> > provide a "starting point for development of a modern on-line
> > comprehensive encyclopedic dictionary, by the efforts of all individuals
> > willing to help build a large and freely available knowledge base."
> >
> > We could make it a Wikipedia policy, enforced by our administrators, to
> > credit MICRA and the place where your version of the dictionary resides,
> > dict.org, for any content our contributors take from the 1913 dictionary
> > you provide.
> >
> > Daniel Mayer