[Foundation-l] New project licensing

Thu Aug 25 12:19:55 UTC 2005

--- Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3 at msstate.edu> wrote:
> I've read the recent discussions on new project policies, and it seems
> that there is somewhat of a consensus that focusing on the existing
> projects is more important than recruiting new ones. I agree with this,
> but I also think that this should not prevent us from working on some
> policies for the future, as least on the question of licensing.
> 
> I participate in the WikiTree project [http://wikitree.org], and we're
> seeing some success and popularity. Before we get too big, though, we
> would like to know if there is any licensing policy that would be an
> issue if we later would like to become a part of WikiMedia. We're
> currently BY-NC-SA, and a license switch would essentially force us to
> erase all data and start over. As such, we'd like to get it right.

Non-commercial licenses are evil. I seriously doubt any project with a non-com
license would be adopted by the foundation. CC-BY-SA or FDL would be a better
fit ; esp since CC and the FSF are working on making those licenses compatible.

What is this project about anyway? I can't access it right now for some reason.
If it is, as I suspect, related to taxonomy or is focused on creating articles
about living things, then that would be duplicated of two existing Wikimedia
projects; Wikipedia (which aims to have articles on every genus on earth and
articles on every living thing for which more than a stub can be written about)
and the ill-conceived and poorly-executed fork of that at Wikispecies (a
project that is nearly as embarrassing as the Sep11wiki). 

-- mav

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