[Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

Thu Jan 8 22:52:46 UTC 2009

Anthony writes:

> Even Mike Godwin seemed to recognize this principle in his early  
> discussions
> on the topic, when he suggested that there would be a way to opt-out  
> of the
> relicensing.  But my single question which I presented for the FAQ  
> was left
> unanswered.  How can I opt out?

My suggestion that editors might choose to opt out was informed by my  
strong belief that only a very editors would even want to.  
Contributions to wiki projects are already subject to an immense  
amount of merger and conflation with other people's contributions, but  
I suppose if anyone really felt that the copyrights in *his particular  
edits* were being used in a way that violated his intent to license  
them freely for others to use, that that person probably would feel  
strongly enough to review some or all of his edits and remove them.   
Obviously, anyone that passionate about this issue will have the  
energy to do this. My expressed view was that we not stand in such a  
person's way.

Brian writes:

> Is a license that is never enforced truly a license, in the legal  
> sense?

Sure. The fact that GFDL attribution requirements have never been  
strictly followed on Wikipedia does not entail that somehow the GFDL  
has vanished or doesn't apply. A more lawyerly interpretation of the  
facts would be to understand that contributors have some pretty strict  
rights to attribution under the (earlier) GFDL that they don't  
enforce. A right in copyright that a rights-holder chooses not to  
enforce does not normally evaporate for that reason.

Alex writes:

> There probably aren't many offline reusers because they're either
> entirely non-compliant and we have no idea that they exist or they  
> want
> to be compliant, read the terms of the GFDL, and decide not to bother
> with our content.

This is absolutely one of the problems this license-harmonization  
effort is trying to address. (Another, obviously, is to move towards a  
licensing approach that reflects Wikipedia's actual practice.)

Thomas Dalton writes:

> I'm not sure Mike was thinking clearly when he said that - I don't see
> any way someone that has made a significant number of edits could
> opt-out. The work required in tracing what parts of what articles are
> derivative of your edits would make removing your edits infeasible, so
> every article you've edited would have to remain under only GFDL,
> which dramatically reduces the usefulness of the changeover. And
> that's before we consider articles that have been merged and other
> means by which text is moved from one article to another.

I *think* I was thinking clearly -- I didn't mean to suggest that it  
would be trivial for an editor massively concerned about the  
changeover to remove all his or her edits. Obviously, for some editors  
it would be practically impossible. For others it might be possible,  
and for still others removal of a few edits or articles might be all  
the editor really wants to do.

But I was actually trying to draw some attention to the fact that  
claiming copyright interests in particular *edits*, while  
theoretically valid under copyright law, are close to absurd in  
practical terms.  Leaving aside the cases where editors made  
substantial additions (or even drafted whole articles) -- the easiest  
cases in other words -- I would think that most of the editors who so  
radically object to the license harmonization that they want to leave  
Wikipedia altogether would be satisfied by opting out of making  
further contributions.  I'm not sanguine about that prospect -- I  
would prefer that they continue on as editors -- but the unwieldiness  
and compatibility problems created by our current licensing scheme are  
a much bigger problem than that, and a much bigger threat to our  
mission.

--Mike