Toby wrote:
>....
>Encyclopaedias and textbooks have a quite
>different style, and I'd argue that any text that
>isn't completely rewritten is a mistake.
>...
The difference in style is primarily organizational and related to focus. That
means that a great many sections of Wikipedia articles can used in a
textbook. To abandon the GFDL and thus ignore the largest open content text
resource in the world is a grave mistake.
I've already mentioned /several/ times now that our long-term goal should be
to work with the writers of the various copyleft viral licenses to make them
compatible with each other whereever possible. For example, all that would be
needed from the GNU and Creative Common people to make their respective
copyleft viral licenses compatible would be for both of them to make new
versions that explicitly state that text from the other corresponding
copyleft viral license is compatible. That would make it possible for GNU FDL
text to be incorporated into Creative Commons Share Alike text and vice
versa.
Until then we are stuck with the GNU FDL (and I have yet to see a compelling
argument to abandon that).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Toby wrote:
>....
>Let us all be friends. Let us create the textbooks
>in collaboration, setting aside the issue of who in
>the end will mass-print them -- because we can't
>stop the wrong guy from doing it anyway!
>....
Thank you Toby! By the time we have our first set of textbooks at 1.0 status
the whole issue might be moot due to advances in digital paper.
At this point the /last/ thing we need to concern ourselves with is how
exactly our content is going to be physically put in front of students. It is
/far/ more important to worry about establishing the framework needed to
create that content in the first place (with an eye toward following
government-set content standards). The beauty of the GNU FDL is that anybody
can republish it.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Is there any way we could get some good legal counsel on
the copyright/left stuff before we get too far into the new
textbook project ? Now is our chance to start fresh and
have the licence we want, not stumble into something
unideal that we will have to live with later.
Maybe we could license the textbook stuff under no license
for the moment until we get things worked out .. it isnt
that important to me if anyone "steals" my work, it is
better than working and having all of the material stuck
under a license scheme designed for software and not for
content.
(My textbook plans dont include using much from the WP anyway).
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
Karl Wick wrote:
>The main problem I see with the GNU FDL as
>it stands is that it demands that any work that
>uses any of its content must be released under
>the same GNU FDL license.
Replace "any work" with "any derivative work" and you are right. And the viral
nature of the license is the whole point - otherwise somebody could make a
proprietary fork. The GFDL ensures that the content is forever free.
>However there are other open content licences
>out there that people will be using. So, if some day
>down the road anyone wants to mix content from a
>Creative Commons license or any other license at
>all, the work must be released under the GNU
>license.
And the same problem applies to the Creative Commons Share Alike license; text
under that license can't be incorporated into GNU FDL works. Same for every
other copyleft viral license. So what is your point? I've already mentioned
that our long term goal should be to encourage the major open content license
writers to make their licenses compatible wherever possible. See
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-July/000127.html
>So any work I do on a textbook will be limited
>to only GNU versions.
No - you can re-license any work you create any way you want. But the version
on Wikipedia and all subsequent modifications by others will forever be under
the GNU FDL.
>It would be as if the work wereforever condemned to
>be in its own, proprietary format, 100% incompatible
>with all other sources and licenses, including all other
>open content licenses that I am familiar with.
Proprietary? Do you have any idea what that means?
>Remember that the GNU FDL was created for software,
>not open content.
Uh, no. It was created for documention and any other non-fiction works.
>And remember that even RMS says that it may
>not be the ideal license for open content.
He said no such thing. All that is written on that particular subject is that
"We recommend making all sorts of educational and reference works free also,
using free documentation licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License
(GNU FDL)." and "For other kinds of works, we recommend you consider the
licenses proposed by Creative Commons." Were in there does it say that the
GNU FDL isn't ideal for open content?
>One solution I see would be to create a special
>version of the GNU FDL just for open content, or
>just for Wikipedia.
For God's sake man! The GNU FDL /is/ already for open content.
>That way we could decide for ourselves without
>needing the rest of the GNU world to go along with it.
Where were you two and a half years ago when such an idea actually had a
chance to see daylight? Due to the viral nature of the the GNU FDL it cannot
be revoked unless every single person who has ever contributed unique
copyrightable content to Wikipedia agreed to the change in license terms.
And to ignore Wikipedia as a text resource by having the textbook project
under an incompatible license or license combination would defeat the whole
purpose of Wikipedia. There is already a great deal of text in Wikipedia that
can be ported to textbook form and organization with relative ease.
>Or, adapting another license like one of the Creative
>Commons ones.
? Sorry, but they have the same problems. The only real advantage they have
over the GNU FDL is that they are easier to understand and are not written
specifically for documention.
>Thats the only way I see that will prevent eternal,
>unmixable forks of content.
And where are these mythical content forks that you speak of? There is not
magic bullet here and the only way we can ensure the freedom of our content
is to choose one copyleft viral license and go with it. Wikipedia is by far
the largest open content resource in the world -- let's follow their lead and
try to encourage license compatibility with the people who write the
licenses.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>What problems are you seeing with the GFDL that the
"Creative Commons"
>license (which I'm not familiar with) would solve?
The main problem I see with the GNU FDL as it stands is
that it demands that any work that uses any of its content
must be released under the same GNU FDL license. However
there are other open content licences out there that people
will be using. So, if some day down the road anyone wants
to mix content from a Creative Commons license or any other
license at all, the work must be released under the GNU
license. So any work I do on a textbook will be limited to
only GNU versions.
It would be as if the work wereforever condemned to be in
its own, propietary format, 100% incompatable with all
other sources and licenses, including all other open
content licenses that I am familiar with.
This will be very inconvenient to Sanford Forte of the
California Open Source Textbook Project and may make any
work we do for his project unusable unless he and all his
people are willing to release everything under the GNU FDL
license.
It is also very inconvenient for me because any work that I
do under the GNU FDL on the wiki is only mine to use under
another license as long as noone else makes any
modification at all to it that I keep. So if I wanted to
release my own work under another, more flexible license, I
would have to go thru the work of eliminating every letter
that wasnt my own. This is hardly the spirit underlying
open content.
Remember that the GNU FDL was created for software, not
open content. And remember that even RMS says that it may
not be the ideal license for open content.
One solution I see would be to create a special version of
the GNU FDL just for open content, or just for Wikipedia.
That way we could decide for ourselves without needing the
rest of the GNU world to go along with it. Or, adapting
another license like one of the Creative Commons ones.
Thats the only way I see that will prevent eternal,
unmixable forks of content.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Karl Wick wrote:
>> Now there's a thought ... what if each textbook project
>> decides for itself depending on its own estimation of its
>> needs? If a project decides wrongly, then only it has to
>> start over. Sitewide policy can be submitted to the public
>> domain, or kept under GFDL for copying from Wikipedia.
>
>I think that it would be very unpractical. Keeping everything
>GFDL makes us bidirectionally compatibe with Wikipedia.
>Changing license to something else breaks that link.
I tend to agree. IMO the most practical thing for us to do is to have
everything under the GNU FDL. This will make it very easy to use the vast
amounts of material already in Wikipedia (which is, by far, the largest open
content project in the world - please correct me if I am wrong anybody).
However, I also think it would be a great long term strategy to work with the
GNU, Creative Commons, Open Content and others who publish copyleft/open
content/viral licenses to ensure direct compatibility. IMO it is real stupid
and counter to the intent of these licenses that text cannot flow freely
between them. There should be some baseline of "freedom" that all these
licenses already have and will recognize for the purposes of transferability.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Thanks Magnus.
I hate M$ Word as much as the next guy, but if you upload
the docs in Word format I think I can use the images more
easily .. is there a way to easily extract the images from
a PDF file ?
Karl
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
I have begun to upload some files to the textbook site. They are PDFs (I
can also upload Word format if preferred) containing some stuff I
scribbled down at university and brought into readable form :-)
I hereby declare that it can be harvested for the textbook site. The
text is German, but I think the images can come in useful.
I have also started a page where such files can be added to clarify
their origin, so they can be used without copyright worries.
Magnus
Jimbo wrote:
>This whole discussion makes #1 [GFDL only]
>seem like our only recourse.
That's what I thought... Which is a real shame because at first glance dual
licensing seemed like such a neat idea. But if we cannot easily use Wikipedia
as a text resource then that would hamper the project.
>Let's discuss this for a few days, and then
>I'll chat with RMS and Lessig about it.
That sounds like a good idea.
>I know RMS is going to say "why don't you
>just use GNU FDL?" because part of the point
>of GNU licenses is just this sort of 'viral' spread
>that forces people to stick with GNU licenses.
I'm not so sure RMS is so religious when it comes to the GNU FDL though.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html states:
:Licenses for Other Types of Works
:
:We believe that published software and documentation should be free software
:and free documentation. We recommend making all sorts of educational and
:reference works free also, using free documentation licenses such as the GNU
:Free Documentation License (GNU FDL).
Note especially:
:For other kinds of works, we recommend you consider the licenses proposed by
:Creative Commons.
>But maybe I can convince him to release (someday?)
>an FDL 2.0 that is a lot more general and easy to
>understand.
Or simply a FDL that requires derivative works to be licensed under one of a
select list of similar viral copyleft licenses like the Creative Commons
Share Alike license. That would make it possible for us to import GFDL only
text into the textbook projects and then downstream users of the textbook
text could choose between GFDL or Creative Commons Share Alike.
But I'm not sure if that would be legal.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav
Now that the wiki is set-up I think it is imperative for us to decide about
the dual licensing issue. I'm all for it but I do have one major concern:
Specifically I want to know if it would be possible to import Wikipedia text
to the textbook project without having to get the permission of every
Wikipedian who contributed to the Wikipedia article to agree to dual-license
their work.
For more detail please read my previous post on this topic:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-July/000089.html
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)