[Wikipedia-l] Two issues here:

Sat May 17 20:18:58 UTC 2003

Ec wrote:
>...
> GNU-FL issues and our principle that the user does not own the content
> also play a role.  The contributor's ownership ends when he presses
> "save".  At that point the legal jurisdiction is transferred from the
> user's country to the server's country, so where is the admin's liability.
>...

Disclaimer: IANAL

This is incorrect. Here is what people agree to when they submit; "Please note 
that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the 
GNU Free Documentation License." Nowhere in there does it state that the user 
"looses ownership" or even "transferres control" over to anybody else.

In fact the submitter by default keeps copyright ownership but agrees to 
license a version of the uploaded text under the terms of the GNU FDL. So if 
the submitter is legally able to do this, then Wikipedia has a version of the 
submitters text in the GNU FDL. 

And due to the nature of the GNU FDL /that version/ can never be changed to a 
different license but the person who submitted the text can theoretically  
make a different version under any license they wish. But in reality the 
submitter has effectively liberated the GNU FDL version of the text (hence it 
is free in the Free Software sense).

It is a very important thing that we continue to have things work this way 
since if all copyright ownership were given to a single copyright holder 
(such as a Wikimedia Foundation or even Jimbo), then it would be possible to 
create a proprietary fork of the whole project. The way it is now each and 
every person who has ever contributed to Wikipedia would have to agree 
licensing a version of their work under a proprietary license in order to 
create a proprietary fork. 

I for one would drop dead before agreeing to create a proprietary fork of my 
30,000 + edits. I'm certain that this sentiment is shared by a majority of 
past and present Wikipedia contributors. So because of this (and the fact 
that it will be impossible to track down all anonymous contributors) 
Wikipedia will never have a proprietary fork. 

Wikpedia will always be free. There is a great deal of power in that 
statement, no?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)