[Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

Fri Dec 3 08:28:17 UTC 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:47:22 +0100
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

>(1)
>While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient 
>thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical 
>fallacy]]):
>- WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to 
>DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
>- Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT 
>simply duplicate WP content.
>Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much 
>less than one might think.

Looking at the Wikinews articles I was involved in so far, it 
seems that taking materials from Wikipedia does not happen much.

If Wikinews articles can be incorporated into Wikipedia article, 
that would be good. I am guessing that the need for Wikinews to 
incorporate Wikipedia articles is quite limited. 

Regarding the license poll, I noticed that the people who expressed 
their opinions are not necessarily the active participants on 
Wikinews so far. I am not sure what to make of it, but I wonder 
if only Wikinews participants will vote on the license issue, or 
any Wikimedian can vote. The former has some intuitive appeal, but 
there aren't that many active participants yet. I think it is okay 
to delay the vote until there will be more active users on Wikinews. 
For a while, Wikinews contents are under public domain - it is like 
a opening special give-away for potential re-users. 

There is virtually no discussion on license issue on wikinews. The 
biggest discussion so far among the participants is if we would like 
to publish unreviewed articles on the main page (the community is 
really divided on this), and if and how we want to change the reveiw process. 

Regards, 

Tomos