Mike.lifeguard wrote:
The problem is that there is normally no proof that a certain user has
agreed to dual-license their work. You can /say/ that something is
GFDL/CC-by-sa but that doesn't make it so. You actually have to get people
to explicitly agree to it, which I have not seen done in a satisfactory way.
By "satisfactory" I really mean "legally acceptable" - this is not
some
arbitrary requirement I have invented.
Since that's the case, removing notices that a book is dual-licensed is
perfectly legitimate - the book /isn't/ dual-licensed, it just claims to be.
Unless there is proof that all other contributors have agreed to it
explicitly, it is GFDL-only. There may be specific revisions which remain
dual-licensed, but we cannot say with any degree of certainty that the book
itself (ie the current version of all pages in the book) are multi-licensed.
I agree that multi-licensing is a good thing, but it has to be done right.
Currently we have no acceptable method of doing so. Perhaps that will change
in the future. Past attempts have unfortunately failed; if there is a case
which has succeeded, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me.
Mike
------
I think the reason "we have no acceptable method" of dual-licensing is just
because you aren't thinking big enough on it. I don't see any sort of legal
reason why you have to obligate any edit on the wiki with any sort of license, including
the GFDL, other convention and project/website policy. On this basis, requiring users to
add contributions with dual-licenses is identical in nature to requiring just the GFDL
alone anyway. It really is the same thing.
I'm also curious about "Past attempts have unfortunately failed"? What
attempts are you talking about here? I know that some individual users have attempted to
have *ALL* of their edits dual-licensed by noting such actions on their user page, as if
by doing so would somehow change the license of the content. In a few cases I've seen
some projects that have taken Wikibooks content and have tried to switch from the GFDL to
another content license after the fact... something which is even being tried (and
apparently has failed to happen) by the WMF itself. But that isn't what is being
talked about here.
All it would take is for the website policy to permit dual-licensing of the content, and
to enforce the concept that any dual-licensed content that is clearly marked as such would
also have to be dual-licensed. The Scratch wikibook is one example of a dual-licensed
content that IMHO is marked... perhaps even to an extreme point as I've put the dual
licensing "warning" on nearly ever page of the book. If site policy is such
that "forking" isn't permitted *within* the website in such cases to be
GFDL-only, I fail to see what the real problem is here.
What users do with that content outside of the website can't be controlled, including
forks. But that doesn't matter as what is being discussed here is policy internal to
the website.
BTW, Andrew, this still gives an "even landscape" for content, as all of it is
still available under the GFDL under these sorts of guidelines. I accept that the GFDL is
one of the licenses that ought to be mandatory. If you inadvertently take some
dual-licensed content and act as if the GFDL is the only license, you haven't broken
copyright. I agree that the dual-licensed content issue is a bit more complicated in
terms of administration, but I don't think it is really all that much more
complicated.
This is also a huge difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. On the 'pedia, it is
intended to be one continuous publication, where an individual article having different
licensing terms from the rest of the "book" would prove to be unworkable. In
this case with Wikibooks, individual books can be unitized and treated somewhat
independently. I've been an advocate for some time of individual wikibook autonomy,
even to the point of perhaps having slightly contrary policies to the main Wikibooks
project itself that don't go against primary pillar policies like NPOV or GFDL
requirements. This perception is one of the reasons why Wikibooks in the past has been
used as a project incubator for a great many Wikimedia projects, such as Wikiversity.
I'm just afraid that this is one more way that Wikibooks is being sterilized and
unduely straight-jacketed with a policy that excludes content rather than trying to find a
way to accommodate such creative expressions in a fashion that can both help the
contributors as well as allow Wikibooks to grow. Far too much content has been tossed
overboard with Wikibooks and driving away far too many users. Please don't do it
again!
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