[Foundation-l] Let's switch to CC-BY-SA

Mon Sep 10 00:35:05 UTC 2007

Axel Boldt wrote:
> Here's the plan: we issue a press release and post a prominent website 
> banner, saying that from some specified date on, the current and all 
> future versions of all materials on Wikimedia servers will be
> considered  
> released under CC-BY-SA. Any content creator who does not agree with 
> this change is invited to have their materials removed before that
> date.
> [...]
> I realize that this opt-out procedure is not perfectly clean from a 
> legalistic standpoint, but neither is our current distortion of the 
> GFDL. If we look at it pragmatically, considering what YouTube and the 
> Internet Archive can get away with, there doesn't seem to be any 
> appreciable danger that we could be successfully sued over this matter;
>   

"Not perfectly clean from a legalistic standpoint" is rather an 
understatement. "Not even remotely legal" would be more like it. 
Legally, this is rather like me uploading copies of a bunch of books to 
my website and declaring them licensed under the GFDL unless the authors 
object by some specific date. Obviously I can't do that, and neither can 
you, or Wikipedia, take someone's copyrighted text and release it under 
a license the author didn't agree to.

In any case, the FSF is already preparing an actually legal way out of 
the GFDL for us, by using the "...or any other version" clause of the GFDL.

-Mark