[Foundation-l] Re: license evolution

Sat May 21 20:37:04 UTC 2005

Delphine Ménard wrote:

>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.
>
I noticed that clause with some  concern quite some time ago, though I 
didn't comment on it.  Article 10 of the licence deals with furute 
revisions, and at first glance appears to deal with the point.  
Nevertheless, even there I am not completely comfortable with it.  The 
article appears to give people a choice about which version whould 
apply.  That's fine when you're dealing with the handful of articles 
that a person might put onto his personal website, but it creates 
potential complications when many users are involved.  A person who 
contributes today may not like a GFDL version that appears five years 
later when he (or his heirs) are no longer reachable.

GFDL version 1.2 was officially published in November 2002; I don't know 
when the change appeared on Wikipedia pages.  This means that only about 
300 of our contributors would have been here when version 1.1 was in 
effect.  Many of these, of course, may have only made trivial 
non-copyrightable changes to the database.  I think that the words "or 
any later version" should be removed from the notice before it starts to 
matter; as I read the licence such an option would be consistent with 
the terms of the licence.  If at a later time a version 1.3 comes into 
being it could then be stated that it applies only to contributions made 
after some specified date.

I favour a Wikipedia licence in principle, but I am extremely wary about 
heading in that direction.  There are just too many dangers.  For 
myself, I have consciously avoided dual licensing my own contributions, 
because the implications are very unclear. 

One egregious omission from the licence is a statement of jurisdiction.  
What country's (or state's) laws apply.  As long as the contributors are 
all from the same country this is not a big problem.  Within the United 
States copyright is a federal matter so specifying a particular statemay 
be less important.  How the licence would be viewed in foreign courts is 
a big open question.

Ec