license evolution (was: Re: [Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary)

Fri May 20 08:27:45 UTC 2005

> A solution that Jimbo suggested for a similar problem on wikinews, was
> to require not only all contributions to be licensed under the
> gfdl/cc/whatever but also a proviso that by editing you agree to allow
> wikimedia to put your contributions under any license they want.

> So it
> will always be gfdl/cc for ever no matter what wikimedia does or says,
> but it can also be relicensed under a different license so that (for
> example) it could be easily distributed in the .dict fromat.

It's a nice idea... but contract law would not allow it. Somehow, you  
can't accept to accept anything...

But there are solutions for a massive licence change. For example, I  
suggest to begin by offering dual licensing for new articles and  
editing. With a bit of time, more and more contributors would agree  
to change the license of their content. With good tagging, you could  
certainly keep a trace of licence changes and wait for the moment  
there will be enough dual licenses to begin removing the old licensed  
content.

Also it would be very important for wikipedia to provide its own  
license and to allow it to evolve. As a policy matter, I don't  
believe it's really safe to leave your legal needs within the hands  
of others like we did with the GNU/FDL (and it would be the same  
problem with CC).

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
CNRS-CERSA Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr