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On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the percentages given as plausible, but do we really have 10
> million contributors? The English Wikipedia apparently has 9,237,657
> registered users, but I believe a very large proportion of them have
> never made an edit, an even larger proportion won't have any edits
> which still exist in articles. I find it very unlikely that there are
> 10 million contributors, even across all Wikimedia projects, that have
> copyrightable contributions. (Of course, I'm ignoring anons - I don't
> see how they can realistically sue for copyright infringement.) So I
> think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
> than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.

We'll have. If you start with just 100.000 contributors and raise
percentage to 10% (which may be reasonable too), you'll end with 100
cases.

But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.

The only issue which stays is related to users which declare that they
want to be attributed: Would we allow that? If yes, is there any plan
("yes" is good answer enough) how to deal with making attribution
recommendations useless? If no, is it possible it legally?

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2009/3/21 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think the percentages given as plausible, but do we really have 10
>> million contributors? The English Wikipedia apparently has 9,237,657
>> registered users, but I believe a very large proportion of them have
>> never made an edit, an even larger proportion won't have any edits
>> which still exist in articles. I find it very unlikely that there are
>> 10 million contributors, even across all Wikimedia projects, that have
>> copyrightable contributions. (Of course, I'm ignoring anons - I don't
>> see how they can realistically sue for copyright infringement.) So I
>> think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
>> than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.
>
> We'll have. If you start with just 100.000 contributors and raise
> percentage to 10% (which may be reasonable too), you'll end with 100
> cases.

10% doesn't sound at all reasonable to me.

> But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
> more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.

Only the last percentage is really a legal prediction, the rest are
more predictions of human behaviour. That said, the last percentage is
probably the only one that anyone can give anything more than a wild
guess at (which is why I didn't choose any stronger words than
"plausible" to describe them).

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2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> So let's step back for a second. There is a claim that the legal code
> of CC-BY-SA cannot be reconciled with the notion of attributing via
> URL-linkback only. Do you agree that this claim is false? If the claim
> is false, then surely it is possible to create terms and conditions
> for a website under which authors contribute under such a model. If it
> is possible, then the final question is whether the current proposed
> terms for the edit page satisfy those conditions. I contend that they
> do, because they are sufficiently clear about the intended
> consequences (we don't need to spell out in detail how the terms and
> conditions relate to the license, as long as it's possible for them to
> relate to the license in a way that is logical and consistent).

Again you miss the point. Wikipedia has 293,896,584 edits that were
not released under those TOS.

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2009/3/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any baring on what
> people have agreed to have done with their work simply doesn't hold
> water.

Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back
credit aren't irreconcilable after all. Now we're apparently moving on
to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining
what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time
on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from
every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use. But
even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't
support rigorous author attribution:

1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
edits under the GFDL;
2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
give credit on the page title;
3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;
4) The act of repeatedly contributing to Wikipedia under the GFDL can
be argued to constitute the release from attribution which the GFDL
allows for.

The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
attribution, as I've noted before. That's evident because the GFDL
explicitly places reasonable limitations on the extent of author
credit, to prevent the kinds of excessive bylines that we've been
talking about. It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
created without a page history while still giving author credit. In
the context of a wiki, change histories were clearly not designed for
purposes of author credit, as they are an incredibly annoying tool
when you actually want to use them for this purpose.

I'm not making this argument: I am saying that we have established,
through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline. What is
and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license. But the
experience of contributing under a literal reading of the license
alone doesn't support a claim to require stronger author attribution
than what we're proposing, or even any author attribution at all.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 10% doesn't sound at all reasonable to me.

In one of the previous emails I described that 5 very active
contributors were not happy with the situation at sr.wp at the time
when there were ~40 very active contributors. I don't think that sr.wp
had much more than 100 important contributors and I may count 10
unhappy. So, the first 10% have some empirical grounds. Actually, even
the next 10% have empirical grounds: I know the person who would sue
sr.wp community if they can. Fortunately, the next 10% are 0.1.

>> But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
>> more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.
>
> Only the last percentage is really a legal prediction, the rest are
> more predictions of human behaviour. That said, the last percentage is
> probably the only one that anyone can give anything more than a wild
> guess at (which is why I didn't choose any stronger words than
> "plausible" to describe them).

I was not EFF lawyer and Serbia is an irrelevant place for copyright
and patent issues: we have 1 (one) person with PhD in copyright :)

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2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back
> credit aren't irreconcilable after all.

Well I suppose that confirms you haven't really been paying attention.

> Now we're apparently moving on
> to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining
> what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time
> on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from
> every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use.

I assume you are trying to claim that wikipedia:copyrights is some
kind of TOS equiv.

Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canale_artificiale
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanal
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_County,_West_Virginia
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB_(%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F)
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaal_(waterweg)

> But
> even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't
> support rigorous author attribution:
>
> 1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
> edits under the GFDL;
> 2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
> give credit on the page title;
> 3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;

Strangely there is no requirement that the history and the title page
not be the same thing.

> 4) The act of repeatedly contributing to Wikipedia under the GFDL can
> be argued to constitute the release from attribution which the GFDL
> allows for.

Please provide the section you think allows for it.

>
> The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
> attribution, as I've noted before. That's evident because the GFDL
> explicitly places reasonable limitations on the extent of author
> credit, to prevent the kinds of excessive bylines that we've been
> talking about.

Questionable. The GFDL is quite happy to see the title page extend
over several pages.

>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
> created without a page history while still giving author credit.

However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
history is required to include "new authors" among other things.

> In
> the context of a wiki, change histories were clearly not designed for
> purposes of author credit, as they are an incredibly annoying tool
> when you actually want to use them for this purpose.

The exception being if you want to use them in the context of the GFDL
which has a similar bunch of annoying requirements for it's history
section.

> I'm not making this argument:

Then please don't waste bandwidth with it.

>I am saying that we have established,
> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.

False. Look up history merging sometime.

>What is
> and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license. But the
> experience of contributing under a literal reading of the license
> alone doesn't support a claim to require stronger author attribution
> than what we're proposing, or even any author attribution at all.

Please state which section of the GFDL you are referring to here. I'm
fed up with playing guessing games.


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2009/3/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
> take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:

Try the edit pages.

>> 1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
>> edits under the GFDL;
>> 2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
>> give credit on the page title;
>> 3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;
>
> Strangely there is no requirement that the history and the title page
> not be the same thing.

There's no reason to assume that they are. The GFDL defines Title Page
as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given. You're in woolly territory to
begin with, which again re-affirms what I've been saying: we can
identify, through past practices, community-created terms of re-use,
the way that Wikipedia itself implements the GFDL, etc., a reasonable
baseline. Providing credit by linking to the page is a reasonable
baseline. And again, nowhere does a significantly greater expectation
for credit reasonably arise.

>>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
>> created without a page history while still giving author credit.
>
> However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
> history is required to include "new authors" among other things.

Irrelevant.

>>I am saying that we have established,
>> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
>> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.
>
> False. Look up history merging sometime.

Re-parse "minimally acceptable baseline".
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Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
> attribution, as I've noted before.


However, you're quite inconsistent on that point. As one example among
many, you said earlier "Indeed, the only way in which contributors are
credited in Wikipedia is through a history of changes."

What is and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license.


Like polling? 1 out of 5 Wikipedians polled expressed that they expect a
full list of authors to be listed in an offline copy.

"Attribution by link" is acceptable to most Wikipedians, but not to all.

> 4) The CC-BY-SA license grants the author the option to not supply a
> name for purposes of attribution. The CC-BY-SA license grants the
> author the option to supply a URL.

Are you claiming that Wikipedians have supplied such a URL? What is the URL
they have supplied? Must all reusers supply this URL, or is it optional for
them to do so?
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Дана Friday 20 March 2009 23:11:17 Michael Snow написа:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > Дана Friday 20 March 2009 06:59:35 Michael Snow написа:
> >> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >>> It is just your opinion that they have over-attributed; my opinion is
> >>> that their way of attribution is reasonable.
> >>
> >> Just because one method is reasonable does not mean that all others are
> >> unreasonable.
> >
> > Has anyone said that?
>
> Not necessarily in so many words. But for proponents of the
> "all-authors" approach to attribution, an inherent part of the subtext

I am not a proponent of an all-authors approach to attribution, and I do not
know anyone who is. As I have said multiple times, I believe that it is
possible through software means to determine a list of key authors (all
authors whose contributions are copyrightable) with sufficient accuracy, and
that such a list would be reasonable from the point of view of authors, and
also short enough that it would be reasonable from the point of view of
reusers, and should be recommended to reusers.

> By comparison, Erik only said that people had over-attributed
> historically. He didn't say it was unreasonable of them to
> over-attribute, nor do I think that should be implied in what he said.

When you are over-something, it means that you are doing more of it than you
should. Usually it is not reasonable to behave like that.

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Дана Saturday 21 March 2009 01:52:06 Erik Moeller написа:
> 2009/3/20 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>:
> >> The fact that they may or may not be logged in is completely
> >> irrelevant if the terms and conditions clarify that their username has
> >> nothing to do with the option of supplying an Original Author name as
> >
> > But the terms and conditions do not clarify that, anywhere.
>
> So let's step back for a second. There is a claim that the legal code
> of CC-BY-SA cannot be reconciled with the notion of attributing via
> URL-linkback only. Do you agree that this claim is false? If the claim

Of course it is false. CC-BY-SA can be reconciled with attributing by URL only
(or even with not attributing at all), however in our practice it isn't.

> for a website under which authors contribute under such a model. If it
> is possible, then the final question is whether the current proposed
> terms for the edit page satisfy those conditions. I contend that they
> do, because they are sufficiently clear about the intended
> consequences (we don't need to spell out in detail how the terms and

I read them, and I know I still expected that in print my name would be there
somewhere.

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2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> 2009/3/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
>> Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
>> take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:
>
> Try the edit pages.

Doesn't help you. Even those that do mention their equiv of
wikipedia:copyrights don't mention it in a context where it could be a
be considered a TOS and not all do. Then of course we have commons
who's Commons:Licensing doesn't help you at all.

Seriously Erik it bad enough that you are not paying attention but
suggesting I wouldn't check your claim is somewhat insulting.



> There's no reason to assume that they are.

Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page

>The GFDL defines Title Page
> as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
> preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
> that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
> be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
> exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
> 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
> interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
> Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.

Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
think you are helping your case.

>You're in woolly territory to
> begin with, which again re-affirms what I've been saying: we can
> identify, through past practices, community-created terms of re-use,
> the way that Wikipedia itself implements the GFDL, etc., a reasonable
> baseline. Providing credit by linking to the page is a reasonable
> baseline. And again, nowhere does a significantly greater expectation
> for credit reasonably arise.

The book version of the German wikipedia? The import export functions?

>>>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
>>> created without a page history while still giving author credit.
>>
>> However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
>> history is required to include "new authors" among other things.
>
> Irrelevant.

Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.


>>>I am saying that we have established,
>>> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
>>> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.
>>
>> False. Look up history merging sometime.
>
> Re-parse "minimally acceptable baseline".


Seeing how we react to cut and paste moves I would suggest your
minimally acceptable baseline isn't.


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On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 8:42 AM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> > There's no reason to assume that they are.
>
> Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
> has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
> accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page
>

That's one way to look at it. A more sane way would be that wikipedians
have collaborated on a number of documents which they agree to release to
third parties under the GFDL.

>The GFDL defines Title Page
> > as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
> > preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
> > that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
> > be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
> > exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
> > 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
> > interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
> > Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.
>
> Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
> think you are helping your case.


Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was blasted for saying this. However, I don't see
how you can honestly claim otherwise. Wikipedia doesn't follow the GFDL,
and never has. On the other hand, that doesn't excuse third parties from
not following the GFDL.

Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
> to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.


At least it's honest.
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I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)

Jussi said he's only seen comments on the licensing issue from the staff, and not from the board. That may be true on this list, and it may be true for the specific piece of the conversation that interests him; I'm not sure.

But I do want to point out two things.

1) At its January meeting, the board developed and unanimously voted to approve, a statement in favour of migration. I think it was included in my January report that was published here on foundation-l a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong and the full statement's not in in that report, let me know and I'll send it to this list. (Or Domas will, or another board member will.)

2) Also at the January board meeting, the board made an explicit request to staff and board members, to publicly speak their minds on this issue. Some people probably would do that anyway, but the board wanted to explicitly request it in this case. Why? Because the license migration issue is pretty complex, and not everyone understands it well.
Basically, people fall into three camps. 1., Those who are already knowledgeable, and have developed a position. 2., Those who aren't yet knowledgeable, but plan to read up in advance of the vote, in order to develop a position. And 3., those who don't plan to read up, and would rather trust others (board, staff, other volunteers) to do the research on their behalf, and to advise them. The board is encouraging knowledgeable staff and board members to express their opinions, as a service for those latter two groups.

That is why you're hearing a lot from Erik and Mike in the license migration threads. Because they're knowledgeable about the issue, and the board has asked them to share what they think :-)

Thanks,
Sue

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:41:58
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com
> wrote:

> The one loud voice here from the foundation *staff* (staff
> mind you, not the board of trustees) was espousing a very
> novel interpretation of the CC-BY-SA that would have quite
> spectacularly failed the "tentacles of evil" test of the Debian
> guidelines.
>

A view which the Creative Commons lawyers themselves have endorsed.

It's fortunate that the motives of this move came out before the decision
was made, because nothing is stopping CC from changing the license later.
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So, the authors directly relate to give completely true form of
contributed to switch to assume your minimally acceptable is because
of share-alike, but you are contribution?

skype: node.ue



2009/3/21 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 8:42 AM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
>> > There's no reason to assume that they are.
>>
>> Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
>> has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
>> accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page
>>
>
> That's one way to look at it.  A more sane way would be that wikipedians
> have collaborated on a number of documents which they agree to release to
> third parties under the GFDL.
>
>>The GFDL defines Title Page
>> > as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
>> > preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
>> > that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
>> > be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
>> > exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
>> > 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
>> > interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
>> > Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.
>>
>> Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
>> think you are helping your case.
>
>
> Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was blasted for saying this.  However, I don't see
> how you can honestly claim otherwise.  Wikipedia doesn't follow the GFDL,
> and never has.  On the other hand, that doesn't excuse third parties from
> not following the GFDL.
>
> Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
>> to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.
>
>
> At least it's honest.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>

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Sue Gardner wrote:
> I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)
>
>
First of all, can I ask as a favor that you never again refer to me as
"Jussi". Jussi is my grandpa.
I am Jussi-Ville, or "J-V" (Jay-Vee) for short. Often also known by my
TLA "JVH" in contexts of
people like Mike Godwin, who date me from the early ages of the
internet. I am not offended,
but I do want to make it clear that referring to me as "Jussi" does have
significance.

> Jussi said he's only seen comments on the licensing issue from the staff, and not from the board. That may be true on this list, and it may be true for the specific piece of the conversation that interests him; I'm not sure.
>
> But I do want to point out two things.
>
> 1) At its January meeting, the board developed and unanimously voted to approve, a statement in favour of migration. I think it was included in my January report that was published here on foundation-l a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong and the full statement's not in in that report, let me know and I'll send it to this list. (Or Domas will, or another board member will.)
>
> 2) Also at the January board meeting, the board made an explicit request to staff and board members, to publicly speak their minds on this issue. Some people probably would do that anyway, but the board wanted to explicitly request it in this case. Why? Because the license migration issue is pretty complex, and not everyone understands it well.
> Basically, people fall into three camps. 1., Those who are already knowledgeable, and have developed a position. 2., Those who aren't yet knowledgeable, but plan to read up in advance of the vote, in order to develop a position. And 3., those who don't plan to read up, and would rather trust others (board, staff, other volunteers) to do the research on their behalf, and to advise them. The board is encouraging knowledgeable staff and board members to express their opinions, as a service for those latter two groups.
>
> That is why you're hearing a lot from Erik and Mike in the license migration threads. Because they're knowledgeable about the issue, and the board has asked them to share what they think :-)
>
>

These are valuable words. I genuinely trust that what has been generated
has not been
only heat, but there has been some illumination shed on the issues as well.

Personally as I have said before I am somewhat wanly satisfied with
where we stand at
the moment, provided there will be no back-sliding later. In an ideal
world I would prefer
multi-licensing under *all* localized versions of CC-BY-SA 3.0 and a TOS
that would
pre-emptively require assent to multi-licensing under any future
localized versions. That
way the issue would squarely land on the re-user, and not on who adds
material. That
is the editor wouldn't have to choose the jurisdictive limits of their
licensing, but the
one creating a work outside wikimedia would have to do so. But it isn't
clear that we
do live in an ideal world. ;-)


Yours, no offense taken nor hopefully given,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Дана Sunday 22 March 2009 09:50:25 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen написа:
> the moment, provided there will be no back-sliding later. In an ideal
> world I would prefer
> multi-licensing under *all* localized versions of CC-BY-SA 3.0 and a TOS
> that would
> pre-emptively require assent to multi-licensing under any future
> localized versions. That

Doesn't simply licensing under CC-BY-SA 3.0 cover that already?

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Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Дана Friday 20 March 2009 23:11:17 Michael Snow написа:
>
>> By comparison, Erik only said that people had over-attributed
>> historically. He didn't say it was unreasonable of them to
>> over-attribute, nor do I think that should be implied in what he said.
>>
> When you are over-something, it means that you are doing more of it than you
> should. Usually it is not reasonable to behave like that.
>
More of it than you need to, not more of it than you should. There is no
value judgment that people should not over-attribute, only that they
should not be required to. The unreasonableness applies to the
requirement, not the behavior. Doing more than is required can be
reasonable nevertheless. If I'm asked to pluck five apples off a tree
and instead I pick ten, that may well be reasonable, perhaps I was
hungry. Whether it's an abundance of caution or some motivation
independent of the requirement, there are plenty of legitimate reasons
that people decide to exceed minimum requirements.

--Michael Snow



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2009/3/22 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com>:
> Sue Gardner wrote:
>>
>> I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to
>> not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)
>>
>>
>
> First of all, can I ask as a favor that you never again refer to me as
> "Jussi". Jussi is my grandpa.
> I am Jussi-Ville, or "J-V" (Jay-Vee) for short. Often also known by my TLA
> "JVH" in contexts of
> people like Mike Godwin, who date me from the early ages of the internet. I
> am not offended,
> but I do want to make it clear that referring to me as "Jussi" does have
> significance.

...

> Yours, no offense taken nor hopefully given,


Absolutely: me naming you as Jussi was just sloppy shorthand.
Jussi-Ville it is :-)

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--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> From: Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 8:07 PM
> 2009/3/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> > Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any
> baring on what
> > people have agreed to have done with their work simply
> doesn't hold
> > water.
>
> Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and
> link-back
> credit aren't irreconcilable after all. Now we're
> apparently moving on
> to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when
> determining
> what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a
> lot of time
> on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked
> to from
> every page has relevance when determining the terms of
> use/re-use. But
> even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL
> doesn't
> support rigorous author attribution:


<snip>

Unfortunately I haven't been able to follow all this closely so forgive me if I am bringing up something already settled.

My biggest problem:
I can understand why using the site TOS in this way is seen as a desirable way to go. After all it would not require any of the technical work that producing a list of significant authors would. But I think it does have big drawback. It would hamper the importation of similarly licensed material written under dissimilar conditions of use into Wikimedia projects by non-authors. Having this ability was one of the highlights that made the pain of the license transition process worthwhile for me. And if we do succeed in seeing free content gain in mainstream usage, this will be and even bigger problem in the future and lead to confusion over the CC brand. Labeling ourselves CC-by-SA but not being able accept much of the material that is published under CC-by-SA unless it is directly contributed by the original author(s) is a problem in my eyes.

Another annoyance:
There really isn't anything being said on how this will apply to projects like Commons and Wikisource that already have a large variety of works under different licenses. How exactly will the TOS be changed on those projects? We need to develop the tech side of having some sort of meta license/attribution information available for those projects anyway. Already the poster and book printing extensions cannot be legally used every work within those projects without such development work. So choosing an uncommon attribution model for the license will not save us that development cost forever.


Possible compromise solution:
This requires an editable tab called Attribution. We pick a date for license migration and on that date these tabs are generated containing only a permalink to the history of the article at that date. From this time on when editing Wikipedia there is a new field below the edit summary asking editors to check a box if they have made a copyrightable edit and to enter the way they would like to be attributed into the field (or also the way the externally written CC-by-SA material requires attribution). Also there is the possibility of setting up an attribution name in preferences where you simply check a box that the edit is copyrightable and name is auto-filled. When saving this information is added to the Attribution tab automatically. Admins can edit the Attribution tab manually to add people from the old history who request it, fix mistakes entered in the field, or remove someone spamming the field with obviously non-copyrighted changes, etc. We
recommend to reusers that they attribute the material with text that auto-generates from the info in the Attribution tab and includes a permalink to the current version of the article. In the terms of use we specify that if you do not opt-in for a specific attribution by checking the box we are requiring you accept CC-by-SA with attribution by url as Erik describes. We continue to hold the position that a link alone is and has always been reasonable attribution as Erik's arguments describe. But from the license migration forward, we are offering greater flexibility in attribution options in order to be to be more compatible with free content developed externally.

Birgitte SB





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Introducing the terms of service, or anything other than the license itself,
confuses it for me too. The questions it brings to my mind are:

1) Which controls attribution, the license or the TOS?
2) For importation, which determines compatibility - the license or the TOS
of the original site (if applicable)?
3) (A restatement of 1) If the license and the TOS conflict, which controls?
4) If the intended form of attribution is seen as being allowed via the TOS,
does the TOS then constitute the actual license (as opposed to GFDL 1.2)?

A lot of this is deeply technical. I'm not clear on who is right, but wrt to
writing and debating skill alone the pro-transition folks are clearly at an
advantage. What I'd like to see is calmly argued and defined opposition;
without recourse to "You're an idiot, and I know phrase X means Y because I
said so." When Erik, Mike Godwin and Michael Snow make concise and well
written arguments, and get replies in the form of short inline comments
along the lines of "No, you're wrong" it doesn't help anyone get a good
picture of what the problems here are supposed to be.

Nathan
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--- On Mon, 3/23/09, Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Monday, March 23, 2009, 2:47 PM
> Introducing the terms of service, or
> anything other than the license itself,
> confuses it for me too. The questions it brings to my mind
> are:
>
> 1) Which controls attribution, the license or the TOS?
> 2) For importation, which determines compatibility - the
> license or the TOS
> of the original site (if applicable)?
> 3) (A restatement of 1) If the license and the TOS
> conflict, which controls?
> 4) If the intended form of attribution is seen as being
> allowed via the TOS,
> does the TOS then constitute the actual license (as opposed
> to GFDL 1.2)?
>
> A lot of this is deeply technical. I'm not clear on who is
> right, but wrt to
> writing and debating skill alone the pro-transition folks
> are clearly at an
> advantage. What I'd like to see is calmly argued and
> defined opposition;
> without recourse to "You're an idiot, and I know phrase X
> means Y because I
> said so." When Erik, Mike Godwin and Michael Snow make
> concise and well
> written arguments, and get replies in the form of short
> inline comments
> along the lines of "No, you're wrong" it doesn't help
> anyone get a good
> picture of what the problems here are supposed to be.

1) The license controls attribution to a degree. Within what is allowed by the license a TOS contract in effect where the content is created could be more restrictive but not less.

2)For importation to a WMF. The licenses must be compatible, but there could legal ramifications for an editor who breached the TOS of an external website by copying the material to a Wikimedia site. I don't think there would be legal ramifications for WMF.

3)License controls the content wherever it shows up. A TOS is a contract which can only bind the people who agree to this contract. Using a website to varying degrees may or may not qualify as "agreeing to a contract" in different cases, but it certainly can qualify as such. So the license always controls the content, but a TOS may control what a particular person can to with the content. If the content is only available from one website with a strong TOS, it is possible for the TOS to control the content completely by binding every single person who has access to the content. This situation actually exists, most commonly with rare public domain content only available through subscription services sold to universities.

4) No the TOS is a contract only binding to people who agree to it and is attached to those people not the content. A license is a waiver of copyright in specified situations that is attached the content generally so long as it remains copyrightable.


But none of this was exactly the concern I raised. My concern was that the TOS proposed for WMF site would restrict authors to using to certain facet of the CC-by-SA license that is not commonly used. This would generally prevent anyone who was not an author from importing externally published CC-by-SA material which likely relies on a more common facet of the license (naming the author by name). This is because such non-authors would have no right to agree to the more restrictive WMF TOS on behalf of authors who simply released their work as CC-by-SA.

Regarding the rest

A partial solution to deal with unhelpful responses is to ignore emails from the people who have a habit of such responses. Of course other people invariably take the bait and you end up reading them anyways. But at least you only get one email instead of two.

Of course to describe this as pro-transition vs anti-transition is misleading. It really is more a matter of the transition forcing to light all sorts of issues we did not spend time thinking on before even though they existed. The arguments that are anti-transition are really arguments against the status quo as well. And the pro-transition camp contains a great variety of opinions as to exactly how we should transition.


Birgitte SB





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2009/3/23 Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb@yahoo.com>:
> But none of this was exactly the concern I raised.  My concern was that the TOS proposed for WMF site would restrict authors to using to certain facet of the CC-by-SA license that is not commonly used.  This would generally prevent anyone who was not an author from importing externally published CC-by-SA material which likely relies on a more common facet of the license (naming the author by name).  This is because such non-authors would have no right to agree to the more restrictive WMF TOS on behalf of authors who simply released their work as CC-by-SA.

This is explicitly addressed - the proposed terms do make allowance
for content attaching additional attribution requirements; see the
section "Attribution of externally attributed content" in:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update

What is and isn't acceptable in terms of additional attribution for
external content, and how such attribution should be displayed, is IMO
something we need to work out as a community. We don't need to solve
every problem in this process; fundamentally what we're trying to do
is create a consistent baseline that's understandable and easy to
build on.

Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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I don't want to open a new thread because I have on my mind something
related to this issue, while it is not connected directly to the
present license migration. At the other side, it is a licensing
question of the future.

Because some articles have thousands of editors, usually it is not
reasonable to list them all in some random derivative work. Because of
that the recommendation is to use a link.

But, we are not so far from the point when listing all links of
previous works wouldn't be reasonable. Imagine that a lot of
universities are contributing to the free knowledge corpus and that
they are using each other's works. Imagine that a number of companies
are interested in such knowledge sharing, too. We would easily get
thousands of links for a single page.

So, the ultimate copyleft license will be PD-SA.

Other thoughts?

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