[Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

Tue Aug 15 20:03:31 UTC 2006

On 8/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>"I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
> >>Wikimania 2006
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Which doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. There's a real effort
> >underway to do so.
> >
> >I'm not sure GFDL is the best license for Wikiversity. It depends on
> >the amount of content mixing with other projects that is desired. I
> >suspect that imports from other projects will be likely to create
> >educational materials of different kinds, such as instructional
> >devices embedding Wikipedia articles. From that perspective, the
> >compatibility advantage of GFDL could be a compelling argument.
> >
> >I do agree that the Wikiversity community should discuss the issue, in
> >a similar way it was discussed on Wikinews after the project was set
> >up.
> >
> >Erik
> >
> >
> I will say that by its nature Wikiversity is going to be mixing content
> from all of the Wikimedia projects (including presumably Wikinews as
> well at some point).  In this regard, I would suspect that Wikiversity
> should remain GFDL for this reason alone.
>
> The other huge issue is that most of the Wikiversity content was started
> on Wikibooks under the GFDL, and by abandoning the GFDL it is also
> abandoning all of the effort that went into Wikiversity on Wikibooks.
> That is a considerable amount of content and not something to be
> discarded lightly.  This isn't like Wikinews that didn't have
> substantial content already developed prior to its creation.
>
> This is, however, one reason why I think the license issue on the
> incubator ought to be discussed, as going from the GFDL to another
> license can't be done.  At the very least the incubator ought to be
> dual-licensed or have some more thought put into it in that regard.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
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I think that the number of contributors to content of Wikiversity is low
enough that a large portion of it may be able to be released under another
license.  All doing that requires is getting affirmative assent of all the
contributors to a page / article / book / whatever that they are ok with a
new license.

The time to start doing that is now, however.  And the question of what
other license to use is a good one... if one hasn't been selected soon, it
will be practically too late.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com