Talk:Licensing update/Questions and Answers

Formatting

A formatting gripe. The ;term :definition syntax is a pretty gross way to format an entire page. I added some section headings for ease of reading and editing but I would recommend removing the existing syntax and just making the questions bold. --pfctdayelise 04:05, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with this comment and thus removed the definition list syntax, plus enclosed quotations in the quote template, but Cbrown1023 completely reverted. I will stay away but I wish people cared more about the logicality of syntax and accessibility . . . --Aotake 20:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It's very difficult to read in the way that you suggested. However, I didn't notice the use of {{quote}}. Feel free to add that back in, but please update the translations as well. Cbrown1023 talk 21:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Who should be attributed?

Under the "BY" component, who will Wikipedia be requesting be attributed? "Wikipedia"? "Wikimedia Foundation"? "X, Y, Z and N anonymous editors" where X, Y and Z are the usernames of those who have edited the article?

If the last, then what about bots and maintenance edits? Can a user opt out of being attributed on specific edits if they want, or would they have to sign out for that? How, technically, would such a list be (automatically?) created for each article and kept up to date? Mike Peel 08:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The idea that individual editors should receive attribution under GFDL is a misconception. Editors are not authors, but collaborators, equivalent to employees rather than independent contractors. My guess is that nothing will change, attribution remains due to the project as a whole. Licenses don't have the power to change the law, and attribution is therefore not a reason to move IMHO. Guido den Broeder 14:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

All editors hold copyright. (Important: Wikipedia or Wikimedia Foundation does not hold copyright of contents. See en:Wikipedia:Copyright for details) It will be better to attribute all editors but it can be difficult to attribute all users. I think Reuser should link to Wikipedia's article so others can see editors' name who provided contents.--Kwj2772 15:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

No, what the page says is that you keep any copyrights that you already had. You don't gain new rights by editing a page on Wikipedia. Guido den Broeder 20:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Leaving aside GFDL (my understanding was that attribution was required, but never mind), that's certainly not the case with CC. That has a specific byline, which needs to be stated (although it can be different for each thing). See e.g. File:Old_horse_cart_at_Snowshill_Manor.jpg, random picture of mine, released under CC-BY-SA with a given attribution line. There is some flexibility in what this can be; it could just be "Wikipedia", or it could be something more complicated including the user names. That's something that needs to be decided by the WMF / the community.

So, to rephrase, under CC-BY-SA what will the required byline be? If there are multiple possibilities, what are they?

My personal view is that the editors of that page should be attributed, if possible ordered by the amount of the content that they have created (i.e. by amount of text that they have written, minus that which has been severely rewritten or removed). Then have the attribution line being something like: "Wikipedia: Author 1, Author 2, ..., Author N and X anonymous editors", allowing for abbreviations if needed (e.g. "Wikipedia: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3 et al." or "and N others" instead of et al.) You can probably guess that this comes from an academic-oriented viewpoint. Mike Peel 17:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I would like support Mike's point of view: Three most important authors and «et al.». That is how it works in libraries, book shops, etc. --Eruedin 06:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It is not, but the comparison is useless. WP does not have individual authors. Guido den Broeder 22:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Why move?

This could have a more appealing title. And the problem could be described first, not everyone is familiar with the issue (don't even now that WP has GFDL now). By the way, sometimes the text talks about "migration", sometimes about "licensing update". There should be chosen a label under which the thing can be sold to the people best. / And I would not use quotes to explain something the Q&A-Text should tell by itself.--Ziko 13:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

10 Why GFDL initially?

I believe that this is merely repeating what has been said before.--Ziko 13:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I notice the date for eligibility of relicensable

I am really sorry, you have lost me somewhere there. Could this be explained in easier words and in a different structure? Like: This is the problem, and this is our solution.--Ziko 13:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Question

How will we have community-wide-referendum? individually or globally? I think the referendum will be held individually because all contributor hold copyright. (en:WP:COPY#Contributors' rights and obligations). I wonder if migration to CC will be done individually or globally. Thank you.--Kwj2772 09:22, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

Hey everyone, I was looking at the new license and I noticed something that we may be able to use to make our lives easier. Under the Share Alike info it says. "If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license." The key in my opinion, is the last part a "similar or a compatible license" now I remember reading a while ago on the CC website that they had not yet approved any similar or a compatible licenses, but I was wondering if it would be possible for the FSW and CC to make an agreement to make the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 a "compatible license" with CC-BY-SA which would allow content that is licensed CC-BY-SA to also be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License with the GNU Free Documentation License being approved as a compatible license which means that you can satify the SA condition by licensing the work under the GNU Free Documentation License and that would allow free switching between both licenses, which would still allow us to import content from wikis that still use the GNU Free Documentation License like Medpedia and would allow us to completely Dual License everything that we import from CC-BY-SA sites. Thought? All the Best, --Mifter 01:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

But FSF wants GFDL content (software documentation) not to be converted in CC content... This is the scope of the 1st November limit. --Nemo 20:22, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Side question on attribution

Greetings, I don't know how to add another pair of questions about the answer to one of the previous I added to the page. In the answer (attribution section) is stated: If you don't like the attribution norms of a particular wiki you're considering contributing to, you can choose not to contribute, of course.

This is valid and obvious for new contributors, but lacks to address to legacy contributions: when submitting GFDL text, a contributor expect to have an history section in every derivative work or copy of the work. This is not required in CC-BY-SA (as per the answer, a link to the history is adequate). How do you think to cope with such a contributor?

Does the terms of use (as stated in this post on the foundation list) will be put online before the voting? Thanks in advance. --Baruneju 22:27, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Given the purpose of the history (change tracking), I think inclusion of the history by reference is entirely consistent with reasonable expectation, and long established practice. (Including Wikipedia itself, where the version history is reachable by a link separate from the main document.) I don't think anyone would argue that the inclusion of the full change history for a page like George W. Bush with every derivative would be a reasonable expectation.--Eloquence 03:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It now says "we will recommend that attribution must always be given by user name". My question is where? Is giving this in the edit summary enough, or are you recommending this be on the article? Angela 03:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

My recommendation, which I've added to the license update page, is that attribution by history is acceptable when dealing with wiki-to-wiki copying where such attribution is commonly accepted.--Eloquence 20:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

@Eloquence: this is a FAQ, I think it's better to cope with some kind of questions here before the vote goes live instead of having "strange" voting due to the lack of informations. What is a reasonable expectation to some, may not be reasonable to others. I'm throwing here some "worst case scenario" to help improving the FAQ. If someone bases his argument on the license (Preserve the section Entitled "History") and the answer is "do you really expect that? This is unreasonable", I think there can be flames and troubles we don't need while in the voting session.

So, my suggestion (based on Erik mail in foundation-l and on your edit to the FAQ, but I may be wrong) is to add something about:

1. GFDL requires attribution (five authors etc), to do that a link to hisotry is widely used (as per Erik mail), CC requires attribution so the same thing (link to history) will be done with CC (I think this is addressed in your last edit)
2. GFDL requires history section, CC does not. "I submitted text expecting an history section in derivative works" says the contributor, the answer is..? ("or any later version" in GFDL? "Reasonable means" applied also to history section?)

IMHO dispelling doubts before the vote is better than having some "you changed things after the vote / you didn't say that before" or any other conspiracy theory later. --Baruneju 21:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Please feel free to add a draft q/a to the page and I will revise further.--Eloquence 20:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted the edit for now. IMHO we should only add questions together with an answer. If there is no answer, what good will the question do? Also please remember that all translations will have to be updated if another answer is added. Thus I think it would be better to first formulate the answer and then add it to the page itself. Regards, --ChrisiPK 11:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

...and only add them if, (a) it is an important question and not user-specific (b) it is done in as large of a group as possible (we want to keep the updates grouped together). Cbrown1023 talk 17:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I can't state the answer, only Mike, Erik or someone from the WMF can. Also, many questions I added days ago got answers from both Erik and Mike, so I'm missing how a question without an (immediate) answer is wrong. About the translation problem: tanslators must check changes in this page, not everyone can translate in polish or chinese ;-) --Baruneju 17:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(I just read Cbrown1023 message): I don't care about this question, if there is consensus about not putting it in I will not insist. What I care is about users coming to this page and not finding a question they are interested in: in my opinion all question are "user-specific", we can only guess what an user may ask. I just noticed a difference in the two licenses and I was wondering if anyone may find useful an answer here (I spotted a flame on foundation-l about something related to this question, but I'm not entitled to deal with flames in foundation-l and somewhere else, so if you find this question not useful, just throw it away ^__-). --Baruneju 17:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Another attribution question

Hi, I'm a little puzzled by something. If (part of) the goal of moving to CC-BY-SA is to simplify the attribution requirements, surely this conflicts with the dual licensing proposal - i.e. won't it still be necessary to do attribution by the terms of GFDL (the most stringent of two licences)?

--Eclecticdave 22:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Under a dual licensing scheme, you can pick which license you want to follow.--Eloquence 22:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, but I'm afraid I was unclear - in that case if the content is republished to another wiki (as I am doing), AIUI such a fork would have to become unidirectional - it will no longer be possible for any modifications made by my users to be given back to WP (unless done by the original contributor).

I would prefer to retain the existing freedom of allowing bidirectional transfer of content, but to do so I think it would be necessary for me to use the same dual licensing scheme as WP. In which case ISTM I gain no benefit from the changes. Or am I wrong? -- Eclecticdave 01:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The proposed dual licensing scheme is formulated precisely to allow bidirectionality. When someone imports CC-BY-SA only content back into a WP page, that page would cease being dual-licensed.--Eloquence 02:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. For some reason I'd assumed the import of CC-BY-SA only content would be limited to whole (new) articles. Now it's all starting to click into place - Thanks for the clarification. -- Eclecticdave 23:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, another point I would like to raise if I may - I believe it is proposed (for those who choose CC-BY-SA) that sufficient attribution is to link to the history page on WP. In which case what happens if the article is deleted from WP - surely the attribution would be broken as the link will no longer work? -- Eclecticdave 01:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, in that case the attribution would cease to be sufficient. This is the case today. There is no obvious workaround for this, other than perhaps setting up a community clearinghouse for admins to provide page histories of deleted articles under reasonable circumstances.--Eloquence 02:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, currently on my wiki I maintain a page consisting of a simple list of contributors for each imported article, which by my reading is OK for CC-BY-SA, although not strictly sufficient for GFDL . I'll probably continue with this approach, as I already have a number of articles that no longer exist on WP.

It occurs to me to wonder if it is worth modifying MediaWiki to allow the history page to still be accessible in some form after the article has been deleted? -- Eclecticdave 23:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Has it occurred to you that these contributors may not like to see their name or alias appear on such a list? The imported article version may not be supported by them, for instance. I certainly wouldn't want that. Regards, Guido den Broeder 15:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm not sure what you mean by "the imported article version may not be supported by them"? To clarify, the contributors page is linked from the imported article page and lists all the people that were listed on the WP History page at the time of the import. The contrib page makes it clear these people contributed to WP, not to my site. I'm obviously always keen to get feedback, so please feel free to wander over to my site (there's a link on my user page) and take a look. -- Eclecticdave 21:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Richard Stallman's explanation is unparsable

"All old revisions are released under GFDL | CC-BY-SA."

Richard has chosen to use the enigmatic and grammatically ambiguous vertical bar or "pipe" character in his explanation for how all existing content on Wikipedia will be licensed. Since the pipe character can mean either "and" or "or", it is not clear what Richard is actually saying here. Can someone replace the pipe character with either an "and" or an "or" so that it is readable? Thanks! Kaldari 20:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It's a direct quote so I would prefer not to modify it. I think it's evident that he means dual-licensing under GFDL and CC-BY-SA (i.e. "and"), but feel free to add a clarification to this effect if you think it's useful.--Eloquence 20:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

CC-NC

Whilst this change is put through, I note that a system will be brought in to allow material imported from CC sources to be singly licensed. Is it possible to come up with some kind of fix that lets us import CC-NC (Non-Commercial) licensed information? I often come across NC images on flickr that I want to import and can't. AndrewRT 00:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

This is not possible. NC means you cannot use it for commercial purposes. The Wikimedia Foundation aims at generating really free content, which means that the content needs to be commercially useable. Thus the licenses are incompatible. Regards, --ChrisiPK 00:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

CC-BY-SA versioning

When the text refers to CC-BY-SA (such as in the proposed license text on Licensing update), shouldn't it specify CC-BY-SA 2.0 or higher? CC-BY-SA 1.0 is not forward-compatible (which cuts sites like en:Wikitravel off from sharing content with Wikipedia, even after this change). LtPowers 18:21, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I quote from Licensing update:

[...] make all content currently distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License (with “later version” clause) additionally available under CC-BY-SA 3.0[...]. It does specify the version number. If you think the FAQ should also do this, feel free to modify it. Regards, --ChrisiPK 22:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Why not just linking?

Why should we not just link to the history page when merging, translating or similar? Please, please, it would be much easier, than needing to write 5 authors. And in reality, noone will anyway follow that - everybody will link to the history. Please! If CC-BY-SA sais it is OK to just link; then why don't just link? On svwp, where we translate a lot, it would be a great benefit. Also, if someone would only translate a few sentences, then the work would take double as much time if that someone needed to attribute the five authors. Please! Leo Johannes 15:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

CC-BY-SA says credit must be "reasonable to the medium or means". It is highly questionable if linking to the history is reasonable to the medium or means once you move off wikimedia run websites.Genisock2 19:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but now I am talking about in the Wikimedia wikis. But, also, I do not think anyone who use Wikipedia texts outside Wikimedia will care about listing authors. And I mean, if it is OK to link while it is more than 5 authors, then why wouldn't it be OK when the authors are less than 5? Leo Johannes 10:44, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

As long as there are 5 authors or less, it is reasonable to make people list them. If there are more authors, it is not "reasonable to the medium or means" to request the listing of all of them. Thus a link to the history is sufficient. Regards, --ChrisiPK 12:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it isn't reasonable, I think, as it would make attribution the half of the job while merging or translating. I mean, if it is OK to link when it is more than five, why isnät it while it is less? Does the Wikimedia foundation actually has any power to descide the exact line "5 authors"? Nobody will care about it, anyway. Please, let us just link! Please! Leo Johannes 20:14, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The current language get rids of the specific "5 author" requirement and should be flexible enough to allow for linking in simple intra-project transactions.--Eloquence 05:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I am not only talking about merging, I also talk about translating. Calandrella 19:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Why the dual-licence?

I don't quite understand why, after the change, editors would have to "agree to release your contribution under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and the GNU Free Documentation License". Isn't the point of this to put the edits under CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL? Why will we still have to dual-licence our new edits? Is there a legal requirement for us to do so or is there some advantage to being dual licenced? --Arctic.gnome 06:44, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

As best I can figure out, there seem to be 2 reasons:

1. To make the transition smoother (everything is still available under GFDL for those that want to use that license for re-use)
2. Because it's how Richard Stallman wants to do it (since he's basically calling the shots on this).

Once the switch is a done deal, we'll be free to consider changing to CC completely (and won't need anyone to modify any licenses to do it). Kaldari 17:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I sympathize with the notion that it doesn't seem as neat and tidy to have two licenses implemented simultaneously, but there are some considerations for it. In addition to the reasons noted, there's the issue of being flexible for the many people who reuse Wikimedia content, so it's less instead of than either/or. I'd ask whether anybody would actually be somehow inconvenienced by sticking with dual licensing at least for the time being? Is there a practical disadvantage, or is it purely aesthetic? --Michael Snow 06:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Texts added after Nov 1 2008

Hi!

I've added a GFDL text called "Breve introdução à computação quântica" to pt.Wikibooks after Nov 1 2008, and it was not in a Wiki before this. What will it happens to it after the changes occur and all Wikimedia projects start using the CC license? Should we remove this GFDL text from pt.Wikibooks, in order to pt.Wikibooks be eligible for relicensing? Or we can still let a GFDL text at Wikibooks after the changes? Thanks! Helder 02:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

That specific text cannot be relicensed, so you might want to ask the author of that text for permission to use it under CC-by(-sa). Otherwise, the text will not be usable, should the relicensing policy be adapted. Regards, --ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 15:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)