[Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifle distribution of articles

[Erik Moeller]

delirium-
> In fact, it's
> pretty evident that this clause of the GFDL was purposely written to
> disallow such things: it was written with software manuals in mind,

Exactly. That's why it is legitimate in terms of interpretation to use  
concepts from the Internet world that are not applicable in the paper  
world, such as hyperlinking.

> Now whether Wikipedia would like to use the FDL is another matter.  But we
> currently do, and changing our license seems pretty impossible at this
> point.

As I explained, it would be trivial to amend our "site contract" to  
provide for a release from this particular requirement of the FDL, which  
is optional. While this wouldn't fix past edits, it is unlikely that this  
problem is going to come up often, and when it does, who will remember  
that the submit message didn't *always* say this? (OK, we'll have to purge  
this message from the archives ;-)

Regards,

Erik