[Foundation-l] Re: license evolution

Sat May 21 15:01:14 UTC 2005

On 5/21/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Robin Shannon wrote:
> 
> >How about this for a draft license:
> >
> >Wikimedia license 1.0
> >
> >Preamble,
> >this only exists to give us an escape route if need be
> >
> >1.
> >Anything distributed under this license must conform to the terms and
> >conditions of the CC-Wiki license or the GFDL license or the CC-BY-SA
> >license.
> >
> >2.
> >Anything licensed under this license will also be licensed under any
> >later version of this license.
> >
> >------
> >If we put that into lawyer language, then we don't really have a
> >proper license, but have the ability to add in another clause in a
> >later version saying "and it must confom to the terms of the
> >foo-licnese". Hence the wikimedia foundation can in effect add a new
> >licnese which which will be backwards compatable when ever the need
> >may come up.
> >
> >i dont know if this is actually legaly possible, but it might be worth a shot.
> >
> >
> I don't know about the legal possibility, but I would question the
> ethics.  What it's saying is, "It doesn't matter what you agree to
> because we can unilaterally change it later anyway."

The last part is actually absolutely not legal. Soufron pointed it out
earlier, you can't agree to a contract you have not seen. And it makes
sense too, what if the people in charge of the "next version" of the
licence decided that new version did not allow commercial use, or
suddenly were theirs. It is I think what Soufron attempted to point
out when he said we should have our own licence, leaving Wikipedia in
the hands of "other people" no matter how much we agree with them,
carries a part of "unknown" in itself. Not to say that I am for a
Wikipedia license, but as it stands today, the GFDL template that
stipulates "or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation" (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GFDL) is highly
illegal. Or rather, does not make sense.

Delphine

-- 
~notafish