What is the FSF Europe's position regarding the (proposed?) changes to the FDL to make it compatible with (some of) the CC licenses?
On 02/12/2007, Florian Weimer fw@deneb.enyo.de wrote:
What is the FSF Europe's position regarding the (proposed?) changes to the FDL to make it compatible with (some of) the CC licenses?
I am guessing it's really the FSF's position you are interested in.
Do you have a URI of the proposed changes?
* Noah Slater:
On 02/12/2007, Florian Weimer fw@deneb.enyo.de wrote:
What is the FSF Europe's position regarding the (proposed?) changes to the FDL to make it compatible with (some of) the CC licenses?
I am guessing it's really the FSF's position you are interested in.
Got me. 8-) AFAIK, the FSF hasn't got any public discussion list (at least no civilized one), that's why I'm asking here.
Do you have a URI of the proposed changes?
No. So far, there has only been a statement of intent from the Wikimedia Foundation:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update
* Florian Weimer:
No. So far, there has only been a statement of intent from the Wikimedia Foundation:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update
Oh well. Here's a transcript of the Youtube video that is floating around.
| WALES: Creative Commons has devised a full spectrum of licenses that | people can use to share their works, and these licenses are ported to | different jurisdictions around the world, and they're easy for normal | people to understand. | | Wikipedia, had it been founded after Creative Commons, would have | certainly been under a Creative Commons license, but it didn't exist | at the time. So we started with a license called the "Free | Documentation License". It's a good license, but it's very | complicated and very difficult to use. So a couple of years ago, | Larry [Lessig] and I were walking in park [inaudible] and started | talking about license compatibility, and how important this is, and so | he and I started a project to try to find a way for Wikipedia, which | has become by far the largest repository of information in the world, | and the largest repository [of] freely licensed information that [has | ever] existed by far, and we said how can we make this compatible with | [the] Creative Commons movement. | | So we went into a long process of negotiations with the Free Software | Foundation, many, many different conversations, that's very | complicated, and what the legal ramnifications [are] in that. What | I'm happy to announce tonight, is that just yesterday, the Wikimedia | Foundation board voted to approve a deal between the Free Software | Foundation, Creative Commons and Wikimedia, so that we are going to | change the Free Documentation License in such a way that Wikipedia | will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution | Share-Alike license. | | And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my 50th | birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the libration of | Wikipedia.
On 02/12/2007, Florian Weimer fw@deneb.enyo.de wrote:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update
I guess you're going to have to wait for a FSF press release.
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my 50th | birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the libration of | Wikipedia.
I find this sentence quite objectionable, as if the GFDL shackles Wikipedia.
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 16:09 +0000, Noah Slater wrote:
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my 50th | birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the libration of | Wikipedia.
I find this sentence quite objectionable, as if the GFDL shackles Wikipedia.
"Shackles" is possibly the wrong word, but certainly Wikipedia had problems with the GFDL from the beginning, viz.: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-June/002336.html
I'm personally not against the GFDL, but I think its use at Wikipedia was misguided at best. It doesn't do that great outside the narrow "manual" focus.
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com wrote: [...]
"Shackles" is possibly the wrong word, but certainly Wikipedia had problems with the GFDL from the beginning, viz.: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-June/002336.html
Never mind! Around the time of that message, Wikipedia relicensed everything without the consent of some contributors anyway, so they could just do that again, except now they're so well-known that the backlash would probably kill them. See:- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-June/002335.html
I'm personally not against the GFDL, but I think its use at Wikipedia was misguided at best. It doesn't do that great outside the narrow "manual" focus.
It doesn't do that great for manuals either. The ability to limit reuse of a manual by another project (through inclusion of an Invariant Section on a Primary topic of that project) is just too obnoxious.
Regards,
"Shackles" is possibly the wrong word, but certainly Wikipedia had problems with the GFDL from the beginning, viz.: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-June/002336.html
Never mind! Around the time of that message, Wikipedia relicensed everything without the consent of some contributors anyway, so they could just do that again, except now they're so well-known that the backlash would probably kill them. See:- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-June/002335.html
I thought that anyone contributing to Wikipedia agreed to transfer copyright to the Wikipedia foundation (or atleast give the Wikipedia Foundation exclusive rights), is this not the case?
I'm personally not against the GFDL, but I think its use at Wikipedia was misguided at best. It doesn't do that great outside the narrow "manual" focus.
It doesn't do that great for manuals either. The ability to limit reuse of a manual by another project (through inclusion of an Invariant Section on a Primary topic of that project) is just too obnoxious.
The GFDL does not limit reuse of a manual, you can use it as much as you'd like.
On 08/12/2007, Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org wrote:
I thought that anyone contributing to Wikipedia agreed to transfer copyright to the Wikipedia foundation (or atleast give the Wikipedia Foundation exclusive rights), is this not the case?
Nope, not true in the least. Contributors hold their own copyright, the Foundation owns almost nothing. The Foundation is a service provider (CDA section 230), not a publisher.
- d.
On 02/12/2007, Noah Slater nslater@bytesexual.org wrote:
On 02/12/2007, Florian Weimer fw@deneb.enyo.de wrote:
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my 50th | birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the libration of | Wikipedia.
I find this sentence quite objectionable, as if the GFDL shackles Wikipedia.
It certainly shackles its reuse. You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. A license which required reusers to attach a 100kg weight to each copy would technically be "free" but also pretty clearly be seriously problematic in practice. You can more or less comply with the GFDL on the web (make the license a link on the same site) or in a book (reprint it at the end), but other print reuses are pretty much impossible. It's a license for software manuals, not for short pages written on a wiki. If CC-by-sa had existed when Nupedia had started, Wikipedia would be using that.
- d.
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my | 50th birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the | libration of Wikipedia.
I find this sentence quite objectionable, as if the GFDL shackles Wikipedia.
[...] You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. [...]
That applies to all copyright licenses, the GPL included.
On 04/12/2007, Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org wrote:
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my | 50th birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the | libration of Wikipedia.
I find this sentence quite objectionable, as if the GFDL shackles Wikipedia.
[...] You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. [...] That applies to all copyright licenses, the GPL included.
It doesn't apply to CC-by-sa. Which is the point.
Attaching the entire GFDL 1.2 text is not meaningfully "free" for photos or single-page texts. And how do you reasonably implement it for a motion picture.
- d.
[...] You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. [...] That applies to all copyright licenses, the GPL included.
It doesn't apply to CC-by-sa.
Indeed it does. It is the whole point of a license, you cannot know the license terms if you cannot see the license.
| * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the | license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link | to this web page.
Attaching the entire GFDL 1.2 text is not meaningfully "free" for photos or single-page texts. And how do you reasonably implement it for a motion picture.
This would fall under fair use. But I fail to see what a motion picture has to do with this, if you use a copyrighted work, you have to note that, and its license.
On 04/12/2007, Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org wrote:
[...] You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. [...] That applies to all copyright licenses, the GPL included.
It doesn't apply to CC-by-sa.
Indeed it does. It is the whole point of a license, you cannot know the license terms if you cannot see the license. | * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the | license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link | to this web page.
Er, no. A link to the licence web page is not including a copy of the whole licence. That's the point of CC-by-sa being considered a more sensible idea for Wikipedia than the present GFDL, which is technically "free" but is monstrously ill-suited to it.
Attaching the entire GFDL 1.2 text is not meaningfully "free" for photos or single-page texts. And how do you reasonably implement it for a motion picture.
This would fall under fair use. But I fail to see what a motion picture has to do with this, if you use a copyrighted work, you have to note that, and its license.
No, you're answering something other than what I wrote. Wikimedia Commons includes images and motion pictures under the GFDL. The originals don't include the entire licence in the movie itself; how is this to be meaningfully reused? The answer in practice is "it isn't" - the licence fails in practice at reusability.
- d.
[...] You can't reuse an article safely without attaching the entire GFDL. [...] That applies to all copyright licenses, the GPL included.
It doesn't apply to CC-by-sa.
Indeed it does. It is the whole point of a license, you cannot know the license terms if you cannot see the license.
| * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to | others the license terms of this work. The best way to | do this is with a link to this web page.
Er, no. A link to the licence web page is not including a copy of the whole licence. That's the point of CC-by-sa being considered a more sensible idea for Wikipedia than the present GFDL, which is technically "free" but is monstrously ill-suited to it.
And you can do exactly the same thing with a GFDL work. For example,
| A copy of the license is can be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gfdl.txt
instead of:
| A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free | Documentation License.''
Attaching the entire GFDL 1.2 text is not meaningfully "free" for photos or single-page texts. And how do you reasonably implement it for a motion picture.
This would fall under fair use. But I fail to see what a motion picture has to do with this, if you use a copyrighted work, you have to note that, and its license.
No, you're answering something other than what I wrote. Wikimedia Commons includes images and motion pictures under the GFDL. The originals don't include the entire licence in the movie itself; how is this to be meaningfully reused? The answer in practice is "it isn't" - the licence fails in practice at reusability.
See above.
On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 23:48 +0100, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
And you can do exactly the same thing with a GFDL work. For example,
| A copy of the license is can be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt
instead of:
| A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free | Documentation License.''
The GFDL seems to prohibit that. Both verbatim and modified copies are supposed to include a full copy of the actual license text, not just a reference to it. See Sec. 2 para. 1 and Sec. 4 part H of the GFDL.
The Creative Commons license doesn't have a similar requirement; it doesn't say that you need to include a copy of the actual license text in order to distribute.
Cheers,
Alex.
And you can do exactly the same thing with a GFDL work. For example,
| A copy of the license is can be found at | http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt
instead of:
| A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU | Free Documentation License.''
The GFDL seems to prohibit that. Both verbatim and modified copies are supposed to include a full copy of the actual license text, not just a reference to it. See Sec. 2 para. 1 and Sec. 4 part H of the GFDL.
I was thinking of the new GFDL (when it is out), not the old one. See section 6a. But you are ofcourse right that GFDL 1.2 does not allow this.
The Creative Commons license doesn't have a similar requirement; it doesn't say that you need to include a copy of the actual license text in order to distribute.
I re-read the CC-by-SA license, and I stand corrected.
"Alfred M. Szmidt" ams@gnu.org wrote:
The GFDL seems to prohibit that. Both verbatim and modified copies are supposed to include a full copy of the actual license text, not just a reference to it. See Sec. 2 para. 1 and Sec. 4 part H of the GFDL.
I was thinking of the new GFDL (when it is out), not the old one. See section 6a. [...]
6a applies to excerpts of less than 20k characters of text, which doesn't cover some articles, or of less than a minute of video. Images don't seem to be allowed as excerpts at all.
Even under the new FDL, in general (section 2), you can only avoid including the licence brick in the work itself if the work's licence is registered with a national agency. In the UK, the national agency for copyright does not keep such a register and I expect most of the EU is similar. (See http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-claim/c-register.htm )
So, in most cases, the new FDL hasn't fixed that well-known bug.
I'm pretty sure that FSF were told that during the drafting process, but I can't check or see the response because the comment search is erroring yet again... (It's ticket [gnu.org #336650] if anyone else feels like chasing it.)
Regards,
The GFDL seems to prohibit that. Both verbatim and modified copies are supposed to include a full copy of the actual license text, not just a reference to it. See Sec. 2 para. 1 and Sec. 4 part H of the GFDL.
I was thinking of the new GFDL (when it is out), not the old one. See section 6a. [...]
6a applies to excerpts of less than 20k characters of text, which doesn't cover some articles, or of less than a minute of video. Images don't seem to be allowed as excerpts at all.
There is a reason why the D in FDL is for Documentation and not Digital, one should use a different license for videos and graphics.
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 16:01 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
What is the FSF Europe's position regarding the (proposed?) changes to the FDL to make it compatible with (some of) the CC licenses?
It would be interesting to find out.
The section is this:
8b. WIKI RELICENSING
If the Work was previously published, with no Cover Texts, no Invariant Sections, and no Acknowledgements or Dedications or Endorsements section, in a system for massive public collaboration under version 1.2 of this License, and if all the material in the Work was either initially developed in that collaboration system or had been imported into it before 1 June 2006, then you may relicense the Work under the GNU Wiki License.
It would also be interesting to see if anyone other than Wikipedia were able to make use of this escape-hatch. I dislike the idea of writing trap-doors into licenses to help people re-license stuff without the permission of the original author.
Cheers,
Alex.