[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

Fri May 20 17:16:21 UTC 2005

Well, the Ultimate Wiktionary website has to have a history... its
necessity in a website that anyone can edit goes without saying. So
why wouldn't a URL to the Ultimate Wiktionary be enough for its
offline use to comply with the GFDL (as the Wikipedia and Wiktionary
mirrors like answers.com do today... answers.com doesn't provide the
history).

And regardless, unless I'm totally missing something, a change in
license is not possible.

On 5/20/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
> 
> >(To correct myself...)
> >
> >I think that there is no need to avoid GNU FDL terms. Just put
> >gzipped/bzip2ed history inside of package and in all of articles
> >put reference (that contribution history can be found in that file).
> >
> >
> Hoi,
> Apparantly you do not understand that there are several issues that make
> the GNU-FDL not practical.
> 
> *Wiktionary data cannot be imported properly into Ultimate Wiktionary.
> UW has no room for gzipped or bzipped history. It is a server side
> database and nobody is going to see the information in this way.
> *Ultimate Wiktionary  will import data from many Wiktionaries, the first
> one could be the nl:wiktionary. Many articles have been copied to and
> from the it:wiktionary. Suppose an article is shared, it arrived first
> from the nl:wikipedia so that one rules.. right ? Now what history
> should we have with the article ?? From a GNU-FDL point of view it is
> unforseen, crazy.
> *When we keep all these histories, who can say it is "my" work? I
> contributed to it ??
> *When we export content to the .dict or RFC 2229 format, this is a
> subset of the data that we have on a word, a concept. We have the UW
> history and all these Wiktionary histories. Histories for each word.
> Histories for possibly a file with a few fields like: "Word"
> "Description" "Translation" "Original source". The amount of bagage that
> we should carry according to the GNU-FDL is unforseen and crazy. It just
> does not make sense. It is also data that has no stucture. Who will ever
> look at it ??
> 
> My conclusion is that the current GNU-FDL does not funtion for atomic
> information like we will have in Ultimate Wiktionary. When it prevents
> the implementation of new use for the data that we have, it becomes a
> hindrance. The goal of the Wikimedia Foundation is to make Free
> information available. When a license like the GNU-FDL only allows for
> server side information that has a static structure, I am sure that even
> Richard Stallman will find the arguments to ammend the GNU-FDL compelling.
> 
> One crucial thing in all this is that Free information should stay Free
> and be accessible. The current Wiktionary data is as closed as any
> proprietary datacollection. This is because of its lack of structure. It
> cannot be used for anything but server side information. Ultimate
> Wiktionary intends to combine the strength of the information that we
> have in all our wiktionaries, it will be structured. It does allow
> accessibility and new innovative uses. By being Free, accessible and
> innovative, we will gain a much wider public, these will not only be
> users of our data but also providers of data. This is what we aim for.
> 
> In the current nl:wiktionary we have people and organisations like
> FrankC and www.ziekenhuis.nl who contributed big time to the content of
> Wiktionary. We do need to recognise their contributions. They donated
> important body of works but we also have people like MARCEL and S.V.E.T
> who added content on a regular basis, it is important that we recognise
> their hard work and their contributions. They make and made it the
> success it is. So if anything, we should find a way to honour the
> members of our Wiktionary community as we move forward to an Ultimate
> Wiktionary.
> 
> Thanks,
>     GerardM