[Foundation-l] New wiki creation moratorium

Mon Apr 14 18:02:21 UTC 2008

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 4/13/08, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>>  But then, I haven't seen FDL 1.3... and guess what, it's confidential!
>>  This is starting to feel like the government here... everything is
>>  secret. Whatever happened to transparency?
>>     
> We can impose transparency on ourselves, but respecting the
> confidentiality requirements of others is just that: respect. When
> faced with the draft GFDL 1.3 text, we had two options:
>
> - We could either dual-license all new wikis under CC-BY-SA to avoid
> problems later, without providing much of an explanation;
> - We could postpone wiki-creation until the new license is released.
>
> We chose the latter option, because we'd much rather discuss any
> substantial changes to wiki licensing openly, with the full text of
> the license visible to the community. So, this decision was in fact
> made in the interest of a transparent process.
>
> (And yes, we did take the current Incubator situation into account
> when reviewing the text of the license.)
>   
Thank you for declaring your conflict of interest.

It is perfectly understandable that your participation in the licence 
revision committee would have confidentiality implications.  A person 
who was not associated with that committee, however, would not be able 
to block certain activities presumptively on the basis that they may 
conflict with an undisclosed set of rules.  That person, without a 
conflict of interest, would continue to act under the old rules.

You conveniently neglect the third alternative: to continue starting new 
projects under GFDL 1.2.  We have no way of knowing whether the new 
agreement will be released within the next week, or whether the parties 
are so deadlocked as to put that agreement on a plane with vapourware.

Your position is not helped by spin-doctoring the notion of 
transparency.  If you are really intent on a a transparent and open 
process, then that must allow for the possibility that the new licence 
or parts of it will not be acceptable to the community.  It must not be 
presented as a fait accompli.

Ec