[Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

Fri Aug 22 18:17:33 UTC 2003

Yes, a LFDL would be a good idea, in my opinion (though this is just
my opinion as a Wikipedia volunteer contributor (as are all my public
posts, pages, etc) and not as a licensed lawyer). As previously stated
it is not a legal opinion unless there is an attorney client relationship,
and as the Wikipedia community is a voluntary association of individuals
I cannot imagine how I could give such a group a legal opinion.

Little Dan and I had a discussion about a similar subject on my talk page  
a month ago; we were also thinking that a limited successor license
could apply retroactively only to Wikimedia so that the vagarities 
surrounding the implied Wikipedia license could be acknowledged
and such a successor license would be general enough to allow for
that expansive kind of licensing that is the spirit behind all copyleft
type licensing schemes without requiring an absolute grant of copyright
to Wikimedia (which is hard to do for the 150,000 so existing articles,
not to mention the other name spaces) which is what FSF recommends
for its software code.

I am concerned also that the distinction between the non-exclusive
licence grant to Wikipedia; when one makes a contribution it is not
the same as the GFDL.  Is it? For example, if someone takes text from
one page and uses it (with or without edits) on another page, if it 
was under GFDL there would be a violation because if the original
copyright owner releases it to Wikipedia under GFDL then when
someone moves content from one Wikipedia page (or between name
spaces) then all the attribution information that is implied in history
pages would also have to be moved. I have never found any discussion
about this anywhere. Souldn't thisambiguity also be considered when
adopting a successor license with the permission of FSF? If all
contributors explicitly acknowledge that they have given a non-exclusive
license then this material can be reorganized (and it would make Wikipedia
1.0 on paper a lot easier as all the attributions would not have to be
included there) and allow for liberal use of Wikimedia materials in any
spin-off project (and allow for direct translations between languages).
Alex756

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

> What might work out for everyone would be the creation of an 'LFDL',
> for "Lesser FDL", similar in spirit and motivation to the "LGPL".  And
> Stallman can recommend that people not use it, while simulteneously
> acknowledging that it can be useful in some contexts.