[Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

Sun Aug 3 22:25:39 UTC 2003

Alex R.
>I should also remind you that everything done on 
>a wiki space IS in writing, the question being who 
>wrote it is a question of proof, but it is written and 
>recorded.

The question before us then is this; can we state on our Wikibooks copyright 
policy page and on every edit page that by pressing save, that the submitter 
is agreeing to grant Wikimedia a non-exclusive right to license to use their 
own unique and copyrightable work under both the GNU FDL /and/ any other 
copyleft license the Foundation may deem fit in the future (with a defintion 
of "copyleft" linked from that word)? 

Can authors transfer the right re-license their work through a click-through 
agreement like we have with the "Save page" function, under the narrowly 
defined terms mentioned, without assigning away all their rights to the work? 

Question two: Would such a notice prevent us from using purely FDL work (such 
as from Wikipedia)?

If the answer to the first question is yes and the second no, then we could 
have our cake and eat it too; We would be able to swap text to and from 
Wikipedia and be able to more easily relicense at least some of the content 
on Wikibooks.

Related question: If the above is true then could we add such a notice to 
Wikipedia in order to cover all new submissions (we would also have to 
contact every current and past contributor we could in order to ask them 
about the change in copyright terms; if they say no or we can't find them 
their text will only be under the FDL)?  

The reason I ask is that some people here see that our content could be even 
more useful if it also could be used under other licenses similar to the GNU 
FDL. This would not, however, solve the problem of us being able to use work 
under other copyleft licenses.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 