[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

Wed Jan 21 20:50:46 UTC 2009

2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> 2009/1/21 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>> A lot of the problems you are having there are because you are trying
>> to group things into "print" and "online". The correct dichotomy is
>> "online" and "offline". Of course you are going to have problems
>> classifying DVDs if your classifaction systems assumes all electronic
>> data is only available on the internet. I don't see a problem with
>> listing authors in fairly small print on the back of a t-shirt, seems
>> perfectly reasonable to me. If instead of names there's just a URL on
>> the t-shirt, does that mean I can't where it in China since people
>> seeing it won't have any way (without significant technical know-how)
>> to view the list of authors?
>
> Nor would you be able to access the list of authors on a mirror that
> carries it by reference.

Ideally, a mirror would carry a local copy of the history page and
link to that. Even if they don't, the problem is caused by the Chinese
government being inconsistent with their polices (blocking the
original while not blocking the mirror), so I think it's fair to make
allowances.

> Whether you draw the distinction between
> print or non-print, or between "online" and "offline", is always
> somewhat arbitrary, as content can change from one state to another
> very easily. (A file downloaded to your harddisk becomes an offline
> copy; so does an email attachment.) A licensing regime that relies on
> such arbitrary transformations of attribution is fundamentally
> unworkable for re-users.

I don't think there's an ambiguity there - when you view anything
online it becomes a local copy, but I think it's perfectly clear in
the vast majority of cases whether it's an online or offline source
(there may be the odd corner case, there often is, there is rarely any
option beyond common sense for dealing with them).