[Foundation-l] Help page mirroring and non-GFDL projects

Fri Nov 11 11:26:30 UTC 2005

On 11/10/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Michael Noda wrote:
> > As I first started poking around these pages on behalf of a non-WMF
> > MediaWiki instance that would also like to mirror Help pages from Meta
> > locally, I would appreciate it if the general case of a non-GFDL wiki
> > using GFDL help pages could be addressed, and not just the particular
> > instance of Wikinews.  Since we're brand-new and haven't chosen a
> > license yet, this will influence our direction in coming to a decision
> > there.
>
> There is some talk that a public-domain or non-viral free-use-and-
> derivatives license would be better for a set of redistributable help
> pages, since unlike traditional documentation (eg a separate manual or
> book) they are integrated with the user's content.
>
> The current help pages on meta are not really appropriate for
> distribution or use, and we don't have any redistributable packages for
> them at this time. (Additionally there are several competing
> organization schemes, they're mixed with other pages, they aren't clear
> who they're targetted for, they use templates outside the help
> namespace, they use images with no obvious way how to package them, it
> isn't clear what versions they apply to, etc etc.)

Thanks, we're aware that the pages have their shortcomings, but as
they're better than anything we could write ourselves, it would be
helpful to at least derive from them as a source.  Which returns us to
the original question: how can they be used legally, both at Wikinews
and elsewhere?

-- Michael Noda