Mailing List Archive

2009/5/21 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>:
> In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing
> update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously
> passed the following resolution:
>
> Resolved that:
>
> Whereas the Wikimedia community, in a project-wide vote, has expressed
> very strong support for changing the licensing terms of Wikimedia sites,
> and whereas the Board of Trustees has previously adopted a license
> update resolution requesting that such a change be made possible, the
> Board hereby declares its intent to implement these changes.
> Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation exercises its option under Version
> 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License to relicense the Wikimedia
> sites as Massive Multiauthor Collaborations under the Creative Commons
> Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, effective June 15, 2009. The Board
> of Trustees hereby instructs the Executive Director to have all
> Wikimedia licensing terms updated and terms of use implemented
> consistent with the proposal at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update

Woo-hoo! :-)

Once again, a big *thank you* to the licensing committee for
administering the voting process. All the volunteers on the committee
have been hugely helpful. I want to especially mention Robert Rohde,
without whom the result probably wouldn't have been ready last week.

The work of the LiCom doesn't end here - we'll now develop a strategy
and checklist to update all the relevant licensing terms. There are
also a couple of open questions that we should discuss a bit further
before implementing the change, in particular, the best process and
policies for handling externally created CC-BY-SA content to be
imported into our projects. I'll post more on that very soon.

This is a big day for free culture. :-)

All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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

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2009/5/21 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>:
> In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing
> update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously
> passed the following resolution:
>
> Resolved that:
>
> Whereas the Wikimedia community, in a project-wide vote, has expressed
> very strong support for changing the licensing terms of Wikimedia sites,
> and whereas the Board of Trustees has previously adopted a license
> update resolution requesting that such a change be made possible, the
> Board hereby declares its intent to implement these changes.
> Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation exercises its option under Version
> 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License to relicense the Wikimedia
> sites as Massive Multiauthor Collaborations under the Creative Commons
> Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, effective June 15, 2009. The Board
> of Trustees hereby instructs the Executive Director to have all
> Wikimedia licensing terms updated and terms of use implemented
> consistent with the proposal at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update
>
> --Michael Snow


You do realise that the copyright policy of that page is dangerously
misleading to reusers yes?

--
geni

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Erik Moeller wrote:
> Once again, a big *thank you* to the licensing committee for
> administering the voting process. All the volunteers on the committee
> have been hugely helpful. I want to especially mention Robert Rohde,
> without whom the result probably wouldn't have been ready last week.
>
I would also like to thank the committee, along with SPI, for helping
with the vote. And really, there are *a lot* of people who have earned
thanks for their efforts in bringing us to this point. At the Free
Software Foundation, Richard Stallman (obviously) along with Benjamin
Mako Hill. At Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, Mike Linksvayer, and Diane
Peters. Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center. Of our own
staff, Erik himself and Mike Godwin in particular. And by singling out
any names here, I know that I must already be neglecting others that I
really ought to mention, but I may not personally be aware of the depth
of their contribution to the process. So let me conclude by thanking
everyone who participated in the process, including especially all of
you who voted.

--Michael Snow

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:
> In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing
> update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously
> passed the following resolution:
Great news everybody. This is indeed an important day for free
culture. I also feel humbled by the fact that you choose my birthday
as the date for the transition ;)

-- Hay

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Thanks to everyone for handling the process so cleanly, and with an
abundance of good information.

Would it be possible to change the license switch to August 1 rather
than June 15?

I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses), but it will
also no longer be possible for currently GFDL massively-collaborative
sites to choose to make the same switchover that we are making (the
GFDL provision is only valid until August 1).

There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
Wikipedia. Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
license-switching option in the first place. We should make a serious
devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
license with their own sites.

SJ



On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:22 AM, Hay (Husky) <huskyr@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:
>> In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing
>> update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously
>> passed the following resolution:
> Great news everybody. This is indeed an important day for free
> culture. I also feel humbled by the fact that you choose my birthday
> as the date for the transition ;)
>
> -- Hay
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
>

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2009/5/22 Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com>:
> Thanks to everyone for handling the process so cleanly, and with an
> abundance of good information.
>
> Would it be possible to change the license switch to August 1 rather
> than June 15?
>
> I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
> time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
> impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
> able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
> impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses), but it will
> also no longer be possible for currently GFDL massively-collaborative
> sites to choose to make the same switchover that we are making (the
> GFDL provision is only valid until August 1).

I don't understand. Why do other sites need to switch before us?

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On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 7:05 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks to everyone for handling the process so cleanly, and with an
> abundance of good information.
>
> Would it be possible to change the license switch to August 1 rather
> than June 15?
>
> I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
> time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
> impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
> able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
> impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses), but it will
> also no longer be possible for currently GFDL massively-collaborative
> sites to choose to make the same switchover that we are making (the
> GFDL provision is only valid until August 1).
>
> There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
> have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
> Wikipedia.  Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
> licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
> license-switching option in the first place.  We should make a serious
> devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
> about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
> license with their own sites.

Three points:

1) We'd like to have all our copyright statements, terms of use, image
templates, and whatever else updated before the August 1st deadline.
That way there is no ambiguity about whether content was relicensed in
a timely fashion. Doing that, including the various translations,
will require a significant lead time.

2) The migration is an incentive to other sites to also relicense.
Given that, it behooves us to get moving early enough that other sites
will also have time to react before the deadline. Seeing the changes
we make will also give them a blueprint to what they may need to do.
Incidentally, the news coverage of this event so far has been quite
limited, which makes it more important that we have an outreach effort
to communicate what is happening to other GFDL projects that may wish
to change.

3) Content importing from GFDL sites (which are not also CC-BY-SA, and
do not get relicensed by their owners) is already impossible now. One
of the provisions of the relicensing is that externally published
content (i.e. material originally published somewhere other than a WMF
wiki) can only be relicensed if it was already in our site before
November 1, 2008. Any GFDL text imported after that date will
probably have to be deleted. This doesn't happen very often on the
Wikipedias, but it is a bigger concern for Wikibooks and Wikisource.

-Robert Rohde

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On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Incidentally, the news coverage of this event so far has been quite
> limited, which makes it more important that we have an outreach effort
> to communicate what is happening to other GFDL projects that may wish
> to change.
<snip>

Speaking of which, I've just created a page to coordinate efforts to
reach out to other GFDL content providers:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach

Very stubby right now, but a starting point.

-Robert Rohde

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Congratulations to everyone involved in the effort to get this happening!
It's been a long road - a longer road than many of us have seen.

Just a quick point I'd like to raise about Wikinews in relation to the
license change.

Wikinews has never used GFDL or cc-by-sa, it uses cc-by. Therefore, this
license change will not be affecting Wikinews.
As a result I think it's important that we don't say in any of our public
statements on this topic "all Wikimedia projects are changing...". Instead I
suggest that we use phrases like "all GFDL content" or "All relevant
Wikimedia projects" or something like that.

The board statement is ambiguous on this point. It says "...to relicense the
Wikimedia sites..." but the Wikimedia Foundation blog said "the Wikimedia
Foundation will proceed with the implementation of a CC-BY-SA/GFDL dual
license system *on all of our project’s* content." [my emphasis]. The licensing
update <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update> page on Meta does
specify that we are only talking about content which is currently GFDL: "to
make all content currently distributed under the GNU Free Documentation
License (with “later version” clause) additionally available under CC-BY-SA
3.0, as explicitly allowed through the latest version of the GFDL;"

Once again, congratulations everyone on the hard work and diligent effort on
this complicated issue.

-Liam [[witty lama]]
p.s. I suppose the same point goes for Wikimedia Commons which includes a
whole variety of licenses including much in the Public Domain.

wittylama.com/blog
Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
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On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 1:22 AM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikinews has never used GFDL or cc-by-sa, it uses cc-by. Therefore, this
> license change will not be affecting Wikinews.

Wikinews only switched to CC-BY-2.5 in September 2005. Before that
many versions required contributions to be released into the public
domain, three (don't ask me which three) used the GFDL, and ja used
CC-BY-2.1-ja.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@gmail.com

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On 2009-05-22 17:57, Stephen Bain wrote:
> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 1:22 AM, Liam Wyatt<liamwyatt@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wikinews has never used GFDL or cc-by-sa, it uses cc-by. Therefore, this
>> license change will not be affecting Wikinews.
>
> Wikinews only switched to CC-BY-2.5 in September 2005. Before that
> many versions required contributions to be released into the public
> domain, three (don't ask me which three) used the GFDL, and ja used
> CC-BY-2.1-ja.
>

Swedish Wikinews was amongst those who used GFDL in the early stages,
but switched to cc-by at July 1, 2005, as far as I can find in the
archives.

\Mike

[http://sv.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews:Copyright&oldid=5550]
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I have been keeping an eye on what content got imported on English
Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported from offsite GFDL-only
sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though, that's not saying much
- we often have contributors bring us whole books they wrote elsewhere -
but that's not a violation since they'd be the copyright holder and can
relicense it however they want. I doubt there are any similar cases
which do violate the terms, but I'd love some help checking that.

-Mike


On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 07:36 -0700, Robert Rohde wrote:

> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 7:05 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks to everyone for handling the process so cleanly, and with an
> > abundance of good information.
> >
> > Would it be possible to change the license switch to August 1 rather
> > than June 15?
> >
> > I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
> > time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
> > impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
> > able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
> > impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses), but it will
> > also no longer be possible for currently GFDL massively-collaborative
> > sites to choose to make the same switchover that we are making (the
> > GFDL provision is only valid until August 1).
> >
> > There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
> > have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
> > Wikipedia. Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
> > licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
> > license-switching option in the first place. We should make a serious
> > devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
> > about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
> > license with their own sites.
>
> Three points:
>
> 1) We'd like to have all our copyright statements, terms of use, image
> templates, and whatever else updated before the August 1st deadline.
> That way there is no ambiguity about whether content was relicensed in
> a timely fashion. Doing that, including the various translations,
> will require a significant lead time.
>
> 2) The migration is an incentive to other sites to also relicense.
> Given that, it behooves us to get moving early enough that other sites
> will also have time to react before the deadline. Seeing the changes
> we make will also give them a blueprint to what they may need to do.
> Incidentally, the news coverage of this event so far has been quite
> limited, which makes it more important that we have an outreach effort
> to communicate what is happening to other GFDL projects that may wish
> to change.
>
> 3) Content importing from GFDL sites (which are not also CC-BY-SA, and
> do not get relicensed by their owners) is already impossible now. One
> of the provisions of the relicensing is that externally published
> content (i.e. material originally published somewhere other than a WMF
> wiki) can only be relicensed if it was already in our site before
> November 1, 2008. Any GFDL text imported after that date will
> probably have to be deleted. This doesn't happen very often on the
> Wikipedias, but it is a bigger concern for Wikibooks and Wikisource.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
>
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2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard <mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm>:

> I have been keeping an eye on what content got imported on English
> Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported from offsite GFDL-only
> sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though, that's not saying much
> - we often have contributors bring us whole books they wrote elsewhere -
> but that's not a violation since they'd be the copyright holder and can
> relicense it however they want. I doubt there are any similar cases
> which do violate the terms, but I'd love some help checking that.


What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they
require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons?

(I would have thought a freer choice of licenses would have been
feasible, since works are likely to stay separate. I'd have
particularly thought this the case for Wikisource.)


- d.

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On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 9:12 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they
> require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons?

Wikibooks is GFDL-only same as WP. WS is, I believe, more focused on
PD material (but I seem to remember they would allow GFDL source too).

--Andrew Whitworth

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Robert - thanks for pointing that out. All the more reason to ask any
such sites to consider a dual license if not a relicense of their
collected works. That does remove the incentive to wait.

I have been in favor of the change, but was surprised to realize we
had almost come to the end of the window for any site to so relicense.

Thanks to everyone who has been emailing their friends and other
projects about the licensing switch. We need to work on a
how-to-relicense guide for the uninitiated.

SJ

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 7:05 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks to everyone for handling the process so cleanly, and with an
>> abundance of good information.
>>
>> Would it be possible to change the license switch to August 1 rather
>> than June 15?
>>
>> I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
>> time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
>> impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
>> able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
>> impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses), but it will
>> also no longer be possible for currently GFDL massively-collaborative
>> sites to choose to make the same switchover that we are making (the
>> GFDL provision is only valid until August 1).
>>
>> There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
>> have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
>> Wikipedia.  Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
>> licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
>> license-switching option in the first place.  We should make a serious
>> devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
>> about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
>> license with their own sites.
>
> Three points:
>
> 1) We'd like to have all our copyright statements, terms of use, image
> templates, and whatever else updated before the August 1st deadline.
> That way there is no ambiguity about whether content was relicensed in
> a timely fashion.  Doing that, including the various translations,
> will require a significant lead time.
>
> 2) The migration is an incentive to other sites to also relicense.
> Given that, it behooves us to get moving early enough that other sites
> will also have time to react before the deadline.  Seeing the changes
> we make will also give them a blueprint to what they may need to do.
> Incidentally, the news coverage of this event so far has been quite
> limited, which makes it more important that we have an outreach effort
> to communicate what is happening to other GFDL projects that may wish
> to change.
>
> 3) Content importing from GFDL sites (which are not also CC-BY-SA, and
> do not get relicensed by their owners) is already impossible now.  One
> of the provisions of the relicensing is that externally published
> content (i.e. material originally published somewhere other than a WMF
> wiki) can only be relicensed if it was already in our site before
> November 1, 2008.  Any GFDL text imported after that date will
> probably have to be deleted.  This doesn't happen very often on the
> Wikipedias, but it is a bigger concern for Wikibooks and Wikisource.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
>

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Wikibooks uses GFDL. We do have some revisions which may be
multi-licensed, but it's probably not safe to assume that any books are
entirely multi-licensed (though some do make that claim).

-Mike

On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 02:12 +0100, David Gerard wrote:

> 2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard <mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm>:
>
> > I have been keeping an eye on what content got imported on English
> > Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported from offsite GFDL-only
> > sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though, that's not saying much
> > - we often have contributors bring us whole books they wrote elsewhere -
> > but that's not a violation since they'd be the copyright holder and can
> > relicense it however they want. I doubt there are any similar cases
> > which do violate the terms, but I'd love some help checking that.
>
>
> What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they
> require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons?
>
> (I would have thought a freer choice of licenses would have been
> feasible, since works are likely to stay separate. I'd have
> particularly thought this the case for Wikisource.)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
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On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to point out the next major step, for which there is no
> time to lose : content compatibility with other GFDL sites will become
> impossible on August 1 -- after then, not only will we no longer be
> able to import materials currently under the GFDL (which will become
> impossible as soon as we decide to switch over licenses)


That became impossible November 1, 2008. Anything imported into Wikipedia
after that date is not "eligible for relicensing" by the WMF.
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also, Dutch Wikibooks made the switch for all new content after 15 April
2007 already for the dual license CC-BY-SA / GFDL, so nothing new here for
them, except that old content will finally /all/ be dual licensed :) (no
more exceptions on pages with older versions).

A big notice in the general sitenotice for all visitors might be worth while
btw to reach all re-users.

best, lodewijk

2009/5/22 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt@gmail.com>

> Congratulations to everyone involved in the effort to get this happening!
> It's been a long road - a longer road than many of us have seen.
>
> Just a quick point I'd like to raise about Wikinews in relation to the
> license change.
>
> Wikinews has never used GFDL or cc-by-sa, it uses cc-by. Therefore, this
> license change will not be affecting Wikinews.
> As a result I think it's important that we don't say in any of our public
> statements on this topic "all Wikimedia projects are changing...". Instead
> I
> suggest that we use phrases like "all GFDL content" or "All relevant
> Wikimedia projects" or something like that.
>
> The board statement is ambiguous on this point. It says "...to relicense
> the
> Wikimedia sites..." but the Wikimedia Foundation blog said "the Wikimedia
> Foundation will proceed with the implementation of a CC-BY-SA/GFDL dual
> license system *on all of our project’s* content." [my emphasis]. The
> licensing
> update <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update> page on Meta does
> specify that we are only talking about content which is currently GFDL: "to
> make all content currently distributed under the GNU Free Documentation
> License (with “later version” clause) additionally available under CC-BY-SA
> 3.0, as explicitly allowed through the latest version of the GFDL;"
>
> Once again, congratulations everyone on the hard work and diligent effort
> on
> this complicated issue.
>
> -Liam [[witty lama]]
> p.s. I suppose the same point goes for Wikimedia Commons which includes a
> whole variety of licenses including much in the Public Domain.
>
> wittylama.com/blog
> Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
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2009/5/23 David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>

> 2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard <mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm>:
>
> > I have been keeping an eye on what content got imported on English
> > Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported from offsite GFDL-only
> > sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though, that's not saying much
> > - we often have contributors bring us whole books they wrote elsewhere -
> > but that's not a violation since they'd be the copyright holder and can
> > relicense it however they want. I doubt there are any similar cases
> > which do violate the terms, but I'd love some help checking that.
>
>
> What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they
> require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons?
>

depends on the language you're talking about :)


>
> (I would have thought a freer choice of licenses would have been
> feasible, since works are likely to stay separate. I'd have
> particularly thought this the case for Wikisource.)
>
>
> - d.
>
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--- On Sat, 5/23/09, effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Saturday, May 23, 2009, 4:00 AM
> 2009/5/23 David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>
>
> > 2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard <mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm>:
> >
> > > I have been keeping an eye on what content got
> imported on English
> > > Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported
> from offsite GFDL-only
> > > sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though,
> that's not saying much
> > > - we often have contributors bring us whole books
> they wrote elsewhere -
> > > but that's not a violation since they'd be the
> copyright holder and can
> > > relicense it however they want. I doubt there are
> any similar cases
> > > which do violate the terms, but I'd love some
> help checking that.
> >
> >
> > What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and
> Wikisource? Did they
> > require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the
> case for Commons?
> >
>
> depends on the language you're talking about :)
>

en.WS is like commons. I imagine most WS are. The editors are not the copyright holders 95% of the time there, so the license is not up to them. The background stuff on the site and any notes written by editors to introduce the texts, will be relicensed I suppose.

Birgitte SB




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<quote who="Samuel Klein" date="Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:05:10AM -0400">
> There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
> have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
> Wikipedia. Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
> licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
> license-switching option in the first place. We should make a serious
> devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
> about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
> license with their own sites.

This is very important. Wikis licensed under the GFDL after August 1st
will not be compatible with Wikimedia wikis.

Those wikis will sometimes be able to pull from Wikimedia projects but
will never be able to merge their content into Wikimedia wikis. This is
despite the fact that many of these wikis chose the GFDL specifically to
gain two-way compatibility with our wikis.

As the group with the most to lose and as the group that introduced the
change at issue, the foundation and its broader community should devote
as much time as possible to this issue in the next two months before it
is too late.

I'm happy to see that work is already being coordinated here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach

As many people as possible should join in this effort and spread the
word.

Regards,
Mako


--
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako@atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Benj. Mako Hill <mako@atdot.cc> wrote:
> I'm happy to see that work is already being coordinated here:
>
>  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach
>
> As many people as possible should join in this effort and spread the
> word.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/14769 includes a list of
things people can do, which I'm happy to amend.

And anything Creative Commons should do to help, please let me know,
on- or offlist.

Mike

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On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Benj. Mako Hill <mako@atdot.cc> wrote:

> This is very important. Wikis licensed under the GFDL after August 1st
> will not be compatible with Wikimedia wikis.
>
> Those wikis will sometimes be able to pull from Wikimedia projects but
> will never be able to merge their content into Wikimedia wikis.


Unless the WMF decides to switch back to GFDL only.
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On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:

> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Benj. Mako Hill <mako@atdot.cc> wrote:
>
>> This is very important. Wikis licensed under the GFDL after August 1st
>> will not be compatible with Wikimedia wikis.
>>
>> Those wikis will sometimes be able to pull from Wikimedia projects but
>> will never be able to merge their content into Wikimedia wikis.
>
>
> Unless the WMF decides to switch back to GFDL only.
>

And arguably, even that isn't required. Sure, any CC-BY-SA-only content
would be in violation of the GFDL, but that's true regardless of what the
WMF says.
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