[Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?

Wed Jan 28 13:09:06 UTC 2009

2009/1/28 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:

>> Yes, along with all the other imported GFDL material... oh, wait,
>> sorry, I mean all the material which a contributor has chosen to
>> license under GFDL 1.2 or later... oh, wait. How is this a special
>> case?
>>
>> The CC switch, when and if it happens, will be complex enough without
>> inventing extra problems!
>
> It is imported GFDL material. Which is a problem. Normaly we have very
> little imported stuff so not something I worry about overmuch but
> someone might want to give a heads up to the publishing company and
> author that we will be looking to switch it (and since it is imported
> we can't do that automagicaly).

This is pretty silly.

The author is... an active Wikipedia user, and has been for three and
a half years. All his GDFL contributions made to Wikipedia can be
relicensed without any fuss, but his writing first published elsewhere
under *exactly the same license* and then re-uploaded, by himself,
licensing his own intellectual property and ticking all the implicit
boxes in exactly the same way as if he had first written it here,
can't be?

But even if it weren't, I'm stull confused over how we have the right
to use one set of GFDL v.1.2 or later contributions, and not the
other. It is, after all, *exactly the same license*...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk