[Wikipedia-l] Licensing

Mon Jan 10 14:51:43 UTC 2005

I know this is a very prickly issue, and I'm going to get a lot flak for 
saying this, but...I think it's time we reconsidered the ramifications 
of the GFDL. I'm not interested in rehashing what's been said before in 
favour and against using the GFDL, but last night I thought of a 
solution that seems it'd please everyone; basically we do not ask old 
users to relicense; they can do so voluntarily, but there will be no 
community drive to get established contributors to multi-license or 
relicense their contributions.

Instead, we make all edits by anons and new users after a certain date 
dual-licensed under the GFDL and the CC-by-sa (or some other preferable) 
license. Sure, this does not solve anything in the short run. However, 
the point is, eventually, some time far far away in the future, 
everything on Wikipedia can be assurably be useable under both the 
CC-by-sa and GFDL licenses. Whether we want to then switch solely to the 
CC-by-sa or stick with the dual-license is not a decision for now.

However, I think this is probably one of the very few ways to switch 
licenses if we ever need to. Turning the giant oil tanker of licensing 
contributions around is very difficult, and will take years, but such is 
the price of progress. This way, everyone is happy; if people want to 
change Wikipedia's license (or at the very least make it dual-licensed 
so as to avoid all those annoying problems with using GFDL material), 
they can do so gradually, and the GFDL will still be preserved.

If we want to change licenses, I think this is a decision that should be 
made sooner than later. I am not suggesting rushing the decision, but 
the sooner we do this, the faster we can turn the boat around. Of 
course, if the community wants to simply stick with the GFDL, that's 
okay, but at least this seems like a reasonable "exit route" if we ever 
need it.

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])