[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 21:38:00 UTC 2004

Toby-
> Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy
> should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft,
> you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly
> how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anthère.
> Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore --
> we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues --
> I'll bring this to their attention (after checking
> that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^

Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power  
in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view. The rift in  
opinion between "copyleft" and "attribution-only" likely exists across the  
whole Wikimedia community. A project-wide vote may be useful.

However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result  
from adopting a copyleft license: for example, Wikipedia content could no  
longer be combined with such material (unless you want to end up with  
documents where only part of them is dual-licensed as non-copyleft). This  
is a huge deal with repercussions many years down the line, so we should  
consider very carefully if the additional exposure we can gain from a non- 
copyleft license justifies such a change.

I agree with Mav that first and foremost, we need to work with the FSF  
towards simplifying the FDL for our purposes, perhaps just as an FDL 2.0,  
or using his FCL migration clause idea.

Regards,

Erik