Fw: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL

Wed Oct 1 14:53:27 UTC 2003

Ops, sorry,
I realize that this was not posted to the list.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
To: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 10:58 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL


> From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
>
> > Alex, every version of every page that has been released under the FDL
> > through this project *has been released under the FDL*.
>
> Has been? So when it was released it could be used and that use is
> covered, but not someone coming later and picking and choising
> out of the page histories.
>
> > redistributed by anyone who received it under that license, and
> > Wikipedia's servers continue to redistribute them under that license as
> > part of Wikipedia.
>
> The link is not stable, they would have to change the link once it
> goes into the page history. Does anyone do that, i.e. this page is
> from a Wikipedia article named: [[fair use]]. Not, this page is
> stored in the page history. Didn't I read someone someone suggesting
> that stable URLs are very important to content continuity? That does
> not occur once a page goes into history, the URL changes at that point.
> I think that is very significant.
>
> > It is the very essence of what we're trying to do that material from the
> > project can be reused and redistributed under that same free license. To
> > claim that this should be taken away after another revision has been
> > made is to pervert the system, to demolish the community editing system,
> > to strangle the right to fork, to pull the rug of liberty from under the
> > feet of reuse.
>
> But a Wiki is about change and collaboration. I think that such a
> literal view of free resuse means that Wikipedia can for ever be
> associated with outdated and poorly edited pages. No! The point
> is that if someone finds a Wikipedia page they can change it and
> improve it, not decide to make fun of us (or hail to the glory of the
> by gone age when pages were really good). They have to re-edit
> that is what Wikipedia is about, not linking to old page histories.
>
> > In short, I can only assume we're misunderstanding each other badly,
> > because I can't believe anyone would try to make the argument that
> > legitimately edited, publically released, FDL-licensed past revisions
> > are no longer redistributable under the terms of the license that they
> > have been released to the world under. That would be to argue against
> > everything this project stands for.
>
> Publically released?  Not everythiing on the internet is "publicly
> released".
> True it is all available and the liberal availability of fair use on the
> internet means that people can get prior versions, but does that mean
> that they are the authorized versions?  The GFDL requires that the
> current version of an article some how be acknowleged. I think that
> is pretty clear.
>
> Also we are not talking about third parties. Most of my argument
> was about the duties of the Wikipedia community amongst its
> fellow coauthor community and the obligation we have towards each
> other in relation to the public.  There is an us and them. We have
> contributed we share a coauthorship bond, we have duties towards
> each other. Third parties do not, we should not encourage them to
> act in a way that compromises our collaboration.
>
>
> I think that when someone uses a page history file they might have
> a strong case for fair use, but the more I think about it the more I
> think that so doing they are violating both the spirit of Wikipedia
> and the letter of the GFDL.
>
> > The arguments about it being _unfair_ to later contributors to not use
> > their work don't make any sense to me, and appear to explicitly reject
> > what the project's use of the FDL license explicitly embraces: the
>
> The key word is develop. The GDFL was written for manuals. It was
> not envisioned to be used in a collaborative social software content
> collaboration project. Anyone could read lots of things into the license,
> as both you have I have done. I think we have both demonstrated
> that there are lots of problems with the GFDL. What should
> have been done is someone should have written a license that was
> clearly written with such a collaborate project in mind, but now it
> is not possible to do so as the license is permanently grafted onto
> more than 150,000 articles (and that is in English only).
>
> > ability to reuse and if desired separately develop free encyclopedia
> > materials under a free license.
>
> Even without the FDL people can develop separate encylopedias.
> Encyclopedias are compendiums of knowledge. Anyone can take
> the knowledge of Wikipedia and re-use it. I see no problem with that
> that is allowed under copyright law, fair use is a lot more flexible than
> I think most people here understand. Copyright law on the internet
> is fairly weak because it is so easy to copy materials and most
> people who post on the internet would have a difficult time in policing
> their copyright, even if they assert copyright they use it anyway.
>
>  I think that if you look at most of the downstream users of
> Wikipedia material you will find that they do not comply with the
>  letter of the FDL anyway; if some contributor wanted to they could
> probably get these materials yanked off the internet because their
> rights are being violated under the license.
>
> I have not found one cite where they do  cite at least  five
> of the principal authors of the material on their site, they do not have
> any clear link back to the Wikipedia page that they have reproduced
> (though most link back to Wikipedia, they have confused Wikipedia
> with all of its diverse contributors). Even within Wikipedias there
> are many translations of articles. These translations are violations of
> the GFDL because they do not respect the original authors' rights as
> stated under the GFDL.
>
> The text of the GDFL is a complex license that many people do not
> understand and do not know how to apply, that is pretty clear.
> I once had some clients (software developers) who entered into
> a contract with an information producer. They all downloaded some
> contract they had found on the internet. Both my clients and the
> producer had no idea what the contract meant, they had assumed it
> applied to them because they heard that the site that posted the
> contracts was used by software developers. The only problem was
> that the factual circumstances differed much from what software
> developers did. The result? No one knew what their rights were,
> or their responsibilities and not even lawyers could straighten it out.
> Lawyers are not miracle workers, when something is confusing or
> wrong, confusing, inappropriate or poorly drafted the lawyers
> cannot necessarily fix it.
>
> Alex756
>