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Michael Snow wrote:
> The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation invites the Wikimedia
> community to vote on this proposal to license Wikimedia material so it
> is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
> (CC-BY-SA), while retaining dual licensing with the GNU Free
> Documentation License. The Board has evaluated possible licensing
> options for Wikimedia material, and believes that this proposal is the
> best available path towards achieving our collective goal to collect,
> develop and disseminate educational material, and make it available to
> people everywhere, free of charge, in perpetuity.
>
To elaborate a little further, speaking now in a personal capacity.
Exploring the fine details of copyleft licensing gets into complex
issues, some of which we've debated on this list. The complexity means
many subtly different positions are possible, and we could probably
debate endlessly without reaching ideal solutions to those subtle
differences. That's part of why (as mentioned) individual board and
staff members, like everyone else, are free and encouraged to express
their own views about these matters.

By comparison, though, the vote we will have is more simple and
straightforward. It's not an effort to create a platonically perfect
license in the ideal world, which is likely impossible, rather it's
asking whether the relicensing allowed by the GFDL 1.3 is progress in a
practical sense. I think that's what we mean in agreeing that this is
the "best available" course at this time.

--Michael Snow


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Hoi,
Where can we vote?
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/3/24 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>

> As Sue has mentioned, the board earlier agreed on a statement regarding
> the license transition, which is as follows:
>
> The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation invites the Wikimedia
> community to vote on this proposal to license Wikimedia material so it
> is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
> (CC-BY-SA), while retaining dual licensing with the GNU Free
> Documentation License. The Board has evaluated possible licensing
> options for Wikimedia material, and believes that this proposal is the
> best available path towards achieving our collective goal to collect,
> develop and disseminate educational material, and make it available to
> people everywhere, free of charge, in perpetuity.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
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2009/3/23 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:
> Hoi,
> Where can we vote?

Hi,

to clarify: the vote isn't yet open; Michael just posted the Board
positioning statement that will be accompanying the vote when it's
launched. The key documents have now been finalized and are in the
process of being translated. (The key pages are linked from
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update ), and the technical
setup is in progress. A current working timeline is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Timeline ; there are
some internal and external dependencies where we might slip forward a
bit further, but I hope that we can launch and wrap up the vote in
April as planned.

Thanks to the volunteer licensing committee for all the help so far.

Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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

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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Where can we vote?
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/3/24 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>
>
>
>> As Sue has mentioned, the board earlier agreed on a statement regarding
>> the license transition, which is as follows:
>>
>> The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation invites the Wikimedia
>> community to vote on this proposal
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>>
>>
My question isn't so much when and where, but rather who can vote on
this proposal. More to the point, stakeholders in the content of
Wikimedia sites includes a whole bunch of people who may not necessarily
fit the criteria that is typical for voting on WMF board members and
stewards.... myself included. I haven't exactly been an active
participant on this mailing list, nor lately on many of the Wikimedia
projects, but I have contributed a fair amount of content to the
Wikimedia projects over the years spanning multiple projects.

I certainly think my voice ought to count for something, together with
other people who are in my position and situation.

-- Robert Horning
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Robert Horning wrote:
> My question isn't so much when and where, but rather who can vote on
> this proposal. More to the point, stakeholders in the content of
> Wikimedia sites includes a whole bunch of people who may not necessarily
> fit the criteria that is typical for voting on WMF board members and
> stewards.... myself included. I haven't exactly been an active
> participant on this mailing list, nor lately on many of the Wikimedia
> projects, but I have contributed a fair amount of content to the
> Wikimedia projects over the years spanning multiple projects.
>
> I certainly think my voice ought to count for something, together with
> other people who are in my position and situation.
>
I quite agree with you, and if you check out the licensing update page
on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update
you'll find that voting eligibility is based on a quite low number of
edits, made any time before the cutoff date. Given the nature of the
question, we understand that anyone who has a history with us should be
able to have input, whether or not they are currently active. Actually,
the edit threshold was just changed from 10 to 25 (still pretty low) by
Erik, maybe he can explain the thinking behind that, as I wasn't aware
of that decision.

--Michael Snow

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Michael Snow wrote:
> Robert Horning wrote:
>
>> I certainly think my voice ought to count for something, together with
>> other people who are in my position and situation.
>>
>>
> I quite agree with you, and if you check out the licensing update page
> on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update
> you'll find that voting eligibility is based on a quite low number of
> edits, made any time before the cutoff date. Given the nature of the
> question, we understand that anyone who has a history with us should be
> able to have input, whether or not they are currently active. Actually,
> the edit threshold was just changed from 10 to 25 (still pretty low) by
> Erik, maybe he can explain the thinking behind that, as I wasn't aware
> of that decision.
>
> --Michael Snow
>

In my case, I have several thousand edits on each of multiple projects,
although I didn't qualify to vote in the most recent board elections.
I'm not necessarily objecting to not being eligible to vote in those
elections, but this is a significantly different situation.

Thanks for clarifying this point.

-- Robert Horning
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2009/3/24 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>:
> Actually,
> the edit threshold was just changed from 10 to 25 (still pretty low) by
> Erik, maybe he can explain the thinking behind that, as I wasn't aware
> of that decision.

The only reason to tweak the configuration was to move forward the
cut-off date (allowing more users to vote) while excluding any
potential sleeper accounts created to specifically hit the 10 edit
limit.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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

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