[Licom-l] Opt-out?

Thu May 28 03:03:10 UTC 2009

2009/5/27 Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com>:
> On this issue the WMF would be within their rights to be prescriptive.
>  (Whether they want to be is a separate question.)  The relicensing
> provisions require an overt act by the Foundation, so the WMF could
> choose to exclude certain works.

Yes, it could; however, really prescriptive high-level decisions are
typically made by the Board of Trustees only when necessary, which I
think would be a slow process to conclude. I'm also not sure it's a
good idea to do so here. Specifically regarding media files:

If we let people re-license stuff at will to GFDL 1.2-only where it's
currently not, that could potentially open the door to thousands of
media files being re-licensed over the coming two weeks.  Moreover,
people might be under the impression that GFDL 1.2-only files will
continue to be treated the way they are now, when all indicators so
far seem to be that the community is moving towards phasing out that
license for media files. This would potentially make such a decision
much harder to execute, as thousands of articles could lose their
media as a result. Finally, it could trigger confusion about people's
ability to "opt out" of the text part of the migration.

In general, I think any opt-out process that is potentially unlimited
in scope (even if it has a deadline) is too disruptive. Instead of a
two week opt-out period, I'm in favor of a committee recommendation to
apply common sense and courtesy during and immediately after the
transition. Rather than inviting people to explicitly opt out if they
want to, I think the community ought to consider it if they request
it, or if they try to actively implement it on their own.

Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate