[Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

Fri May 20 08:29:52 UTC 2005

Hello,

changing the license of a running project is difficult, but not that  
much. Just think that it will take some time but it will avoid all  
the present problems we have on WP.

Le 19 mai 05 à 18:45, Gerard Meijssen a écrit :

> 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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