[Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

Fri May 20 06:12:58 UTC 2005

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 can
reference that contribution history can be found in that file.

On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> 
> So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license.
> With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real
> possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict
> format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail
> that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At
> this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not
> realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL
> does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to
> expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that
> we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict
> format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance
> of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not
> feasible to export the complete history with every word.
> 
> I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far
> as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free
> therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I
> really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author
> information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are
> working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the
> data when it finds this other use.
> 
> Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate
> Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from
> the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is
> possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary
> will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing
> Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content
> including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the
> current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention
> the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims
> of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view
> there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change
> the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the
> data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data
> that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there
> will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
> 
> We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise
> past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for
> people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work
> they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
> 
> Basically I have two questions;
> 
> *What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
> of the UW data
> *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
> UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
> original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
> the license?
> 
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
> 
> 
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