Toby Bartels wrote:
Since HTML and ASCII are themselves transparent
(at least HTML is unless you deliberately obscure it),
how do you know that part of the derivation process
wasn't to translate the soure from PediaWiki to HTML?
Then they just have to provide the HTML of the derived work --
which is exactly what their HTTP server does.
OTC, the link back to Wikipedia is required, as I understand it,
to give /credit/ for the work, which the GFDL also insists upon.
It could be avoided by copying all of the credit info to the new site
(which might include copying contact info from user pages, I'm not sure).
Simpler just to link back to Wikipedia.
After reading through the GFDL again I'm more clear on this now: HTML is
explicitly mentioned as an acceptable "transparent" format, so to
fulfill that requirement all they have to provide is the webpage itself;
they do not anywhere have to provide access to the original unmodified work.
The only further requirement is that they list all authors of their
modifications (e.g. list themselves), and list the names of five authors
of the original version (or all the authors if fewer than five).
Contact information is not required, just the names (presumably if the
authors originally published under a pseudonym/username, that name would
suffice as well). This is a bit vague though -- it seems to indicate
that essentially all they have to do is preserve the credit in the
author list of the original document: but Wikipedia documents do not
have an author list. One can be inferred by looking at the page
history, but there is no explicit list anywhere of "these are the
authors of this document." The GFDL isn't clear on whether it's the
modifier's responsibility to construct such a list of the original
document does not contain one; I would lean towards not. If not, then
all the deriver has to do is provide their webpage and say "this is
licensed under the GFDL." They don't even have to say "from
Wikipedia,"
as Wikipedia does not own any of the relevant copyrights.
Of course I may be wrong in that interpretation -- perhaps they have to
list the copyright holders even if the original document does not, but
that seems like it'd be an odd requirement.
-Mark