[WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL source?

Thu May 27 12:49:27 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> RMS threatened to start GNUpedia if Nupedia didn't change to the GNU
> FDL (and Wikipedia inherited Nupedia's license decision).

I understand that this is a popular view of what happened back then,
but I wanted to just say that I think it's unfair to RMS to put it
that way at all.  That's just not really accurate history.

What happened was that some people approached RMS about the idea of
starting a "GNUpedia" and he said yes.  He had, prior to that, seen
Nupedia, which at the time didn't yet have a license, just a promise
to come up with an appropriate free license, and he mistakenly assumed
that it was just another proprietary project trading on the popularity
of the "open source" concept.

We did quickly (perhaps too quickly) adopt the GNU FDL at that time,
in order to demonstrate that a fork was not needed and that we were
indeed a genuine free project.

Additionally, RMS has given me favorable indications that he would
like to see some simplifications and changes to the license, and I'm
going to be meeting with at least Larry Lessig (who is now a board
member at FSF) in Berlin, and probably some other FSF people as well,
to give our input on work that is already underway regarding such
issues as license compatibility (with Creative Commons licenses) and
simplicity, etc.

I am very optimistic about beneficial changes soon, but of course
everyone involved (including me!) prefers to take these things slowly
and thoughtfully.

--Jimbo