[Foundation-l] Simple solution to the GFDL/CC-by-SA issue

Wed Dec 5 08:30:10 UTC 2007

On 05/12/2007, Lilewyn <lilewyn at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Silly question time. Just because a project, say, decides to migrate
> from one license type to another, how can the project forcefully reassign
> the older contributions under the new license? I'm familiar with the GFDL
> and CC-BY-SA, but suppose someone (who is a stick-in-the-mud true
> believer of the GFDL, for instance?) insists that their contributions are
> only licensed under the GFDL and not a similar but less restrictive CC license?
> What about all the contributors (aka copyright holders for Wikipedia's content)
> who either disagree with such a move, or those who simply never give consent
> to the changeover?
> I'm hoping I'm missing something.

"or later"

Each time you press "submit", you're contributing your text under GFDL
1.2 *or later*.

What WMF has done is formally ask the FSF to come up with a new
official version of the GFDL that is compatible or identical with a
present or future version of CC-by-sa. So the new licence text would
be an already-agreed-to-licence for the GFDL 1.2 or later
contributions.

- d.