[Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1

Thu May 28 18:57:51 UTC 2009

2009/5/28 David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com>:
> The solution, as with international affairs, is tolerance. In this
> case, the practical aceptance of all free licenses as equivalent,
> regardless of lthe licensing zealots.

Comparing Affero to just about any other free license shows that to be
completely false.

>Free culture arose to permit
> reuse, and should continue that way. We should  simply have told the
> FSF:  At least when dealign with text, we regard all CC-BY licenses as
> compatible with each other and with GFDL, and therefore there's
> nothing that needs to be negotiated.

It's a great way to get reuses sued by discruntled wikipedians but has
no useful function. The foundation doesn't hold the copyright on very
much GFDL or CC-BY-SA material so it's opinion is of little wider
importance. The courts on the other hand....

> Anyone who wants to use our
> content

There isn't really any. The foundation is not a major IP holder.

>under any such license is welcome, and we will treat yours
> similarly, under the presumption that any court would regard the
> differences as insignificant.

The odds of a court coming to that ruling are effectively zilch since
it would cause serious issues with the wider legal landscape in
relation to copyright licensing.

-- 
geni