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

Tue Sep 11 14:29:51 UTC 2007

2007/9/11, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com>:

> All this is just al illustration of my opinion that the GFDL is a highly
> impractical license, and that we would do well to accept other licenses
> instead of or alongside GFDL.

As just to show how impractical - there are 14 requirements for
modified versions, of those 14:
* A is broken by Wikipedia (no different title is given)
* B is broken (author of the new version and authors of the previous
version are not given on what should reasonably be considered the
title page)
* C is broken (wikipedia is mentioned on the 'title page', but not
being a formal entity can't be the publisher, that is, I guess, the
WMF)
* D is trivially adhered to (there are no copyright notices on
Wikipedia pages, so they are indeed kept)
* E is broken (the copyright notice as required by the GFDL is not shown)
* F is broken only in a trivial way (the permission is shown, but not
after the copyright notices, since they aren't shown)
* G is trivially kept (there are no invariant sections and cover
texts, so they are kept as far as they exist)
* H is possibly adhered to (the issue is whether having a link is
sufficient to consider the GFDL is 'included')
* I is broken (our history does not include the title or the publisher
of the modified version)
* J is kept (the history gives links to a network location of a
transparent copy)
* K is trivially kept (there are no acknowledgements or dedications,
so keeping them is trivial)
* L is trivially kept (there are no invariant sections)
* M is trivially kept (there is no section 'endorsements')
* N is (usually) kept
* O is trivially kept (there are no warranty disclaimers)

Of 15 requirements, I count 3 adhered to, 5 broken and 8 trivially
adhered to. If we're so bad at keeping to the GFDL ourselves, we
surely are putting undue pressure on others by forcing them to adhere
to it.

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels