2008/8/16 Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111(a)gmail.com>om>:
It gets harder for content reusers to apply our
material, because they
have to figure out what the individual license stipulations on each
book are. It makes it harder for contributors, because they have to
figure out what license they are agreeing to before they are even
allowed to make an edit. We could change the copyright notice to say
"All text is released under the GFDL, except for some books where
additional license terms are in effect. Use at your own risk", but
that doesn't help anybody.
If you make a requirement that each book must be licensed under at
least the GFDL, but allow to potentially other licenses, then you can
give straightforward instructions to content reusers - they can always
use the GFDL. (which is hardly the easiest license in the world to
comply with BTW.)
Does Wikibooks need some new functionality in MediaWiki, for example
the possibility of specifying a custom MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning to
be displayed?
e.g....
on a page, you have
{{COPYRIGHTWARNING:Foobook}}
It has no visible output, but when you edit the page, instead of
seeing <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning> below
the edit box, the user sees MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/Foobook ... or
some other similar system. Maybe just specify the full name of an
appropriate template.
Or maybe...
on a page, you have
{{LICENSES:GFDL|http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License,CC-BY-SA-3.0;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/}}
i.e. {{LICENSES|licensename1,licenseurl1;licensename2,licenseurl2}}
and then [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]] works slightly differently. If
no {{LICENSES}} are marked on the page, it does the default message it
does now. If {{LICENSES}} are supplied, then it inserts links to each
of the license names, into the text of MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning.
Would something like this help?
The real problem, even if we change our disclaimers
and put notices on
every page of every multi-licensed book is that we lack consistency.
Wikis always lack consistency. :) It's almost a logical consequence.
We start asking people to wade through our licensing
problems. It gets
harder for new authors to create a book because they have to select a
license (or a set of licenses) and they have to mark pages with
notices to the effect.
No, by default all books are just GFDL. Same as now.
It gets harder for new contributors, because
they have to be aware of the individual licensing
requirements before
they can contribute.
Do you think all current contributors brush up on their knowledge of
the finer points of the GFDL before they leap in?
We are not asking something radically unexpected. If contributors know
anything about the licensing it's hopefully that we want to encourage
re-use and modification. Hopefully they're also aware that the GFDL
allows commercial use, but that still comes as a surprise to longtime
editors every now and then.
I guess my point is, if you want to set a higher standard of
contributor understanding than we currently -in reality- have, then of
course dual-licensing is bound to be unacceptable.
It gets harder for content reusers because they
have to know and understand all the licensing
ramifications of each
individual book.
It gets easier because they have more licenses to choose from, and
ones that are easier to understand and comply with than the GFDL. They
only have to choose one license, after all -- not comply with all
simultaneously (unless they want).
It's definitely going to make things harder on our
patrollers and our admins who are going to be tasked
with enforcing a
myriad of licenses.
I don't quite get this difficulty. Enforcing how? How will it be
different to enforcing the GFDL?
Have a multi-licensing policy like this:
* All books must be licensed under the GFDL.
* By default, a book is only licensed under the GFDL. Multi-licensed
books must be clearly marked as such. (insert your favourite
recommendations for "clearly marked" here.)
* Books may be multi-licensed if there is good cause.
** e.g. Wanting to keep a book synchronised with another source which
is already multi-licensed.
** e.g. Wanting to produce a book for a particular environment where
the GFDL alone would not be acceptable. (some other wiki with another
license, or maybe some opencourseware thing, whatever)
* *All* book licenses must be listed as Free Culture Licenses at
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses . (this stops someone starting a
GFDL + CC-BY-NC-SA book. which I presume you want to do.)
Wikibooks is not going to survive, let alone thrive, as an island.
Respectfully,
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/