Mailing List Archive

On Fri, 2003-03-28 at 23:59, Langdon Stevenson wrote:
>
> > > In any case, do you plan to keep up the site? A Wikipedia mirror would
> > > certainly be nice.
> > >
> >It would be if it respected the copyright of the text and the code. It
> >clearly doesn't, yet. For one thing, they need to change the name of their
> >mirror. But I hope they're willing to work with us to make it comply with
> >the GFDL.
>
> Wikipedia is a great resource (that I have personally enjoyed contributing
> information to) and we respect the work and effort that has gone into its
> creation. We want to support that effort, and definitely want to comply
> with the licence terms. Any assistance (by pointing out problems) you can
> give us is greatly appreciated. We will modify our installation to make it
> compliant.

Excellent! I'm noone official, but I've done a serious study of the
GFDL, etc. and discussed its implementation with RMS, so I have a pretty
good handle on what to do.

There are two primary obligations of a mirror/redistribution of the
Wikipedia content under the GFDL: rename it (that is, don't let visitors
think that they are seeing the Official Wikipedia), and add a "History"
page.

It gets slightly more complicated if you make your version of the site
editable; then you have to make sure that the changed source content is
regularly updated and readily available.

The "History" page would look something like this:

<h1>History</h1>

<i>Wikipedia: The Free Encylopedia</i>, 2001-2003, Wikipedia
Contributors, http://www.wikipedia.org/ <br>
<i>InfoWrangler Wikipedia Mirror</i>, 2003, Object Positive Staff,
Object Positive

<p>The wiki source used for the InfoWrangler Wikipedia Mirror is
available at <some url>


> >There are also questions about the GPL phpwiki code that are
> >raised, though it does seem at first blush that they're properly keeping
> >their code separate from ours.
>
> Yes, we believe this is the case. InfoWrangler Server is a stand alone
> application that provides a service to Wikipedia. It does not rely on any
> database info, or code from Wikipedia.
>
> We have of course modified some of the PHP code of Wikipedia so that
> appropriate calls are made to InfoWrangler Server when a page is
> viewed/created/edited. This is currently being packaged and will be
> released to the Wikipedia development team when its ready.

Excellent. Actually, as long as the InfoWrangler code is independent of
Wikipedia, the terms of the GPL only obligate you to share modifications
of the Wikipedia code if you ever sell/redistribute that code to third
parties--not if you simply *run* the modified code.

That is, we definitely welcome any improvements/extensions to the code
you make, but simply running a modified version of the Wikipedia code
puts you under no code-sharing obligations.

The Cunctator wrote:
> Excellent! I'm noone official,

I'm someone official, and what Cunc says sounds right to me!

> It gets slightly more complicated if you make your version of the site
> editable; then you have to make sure that the changed source content is
> regularly updated and readily available.

From what I can tell, they aren't trying to fork the content project,
they just like to use it as a showcase for their technology, which is
great. So, likely they will want to just point the editing links
right back to us?



--Jimbo

> > We will modify our installation to make it
> > compliant.
>
>Excellent! I'm noone official, but I've done a serious study of the
>GFDL, etc. and discussed its implementation with RMS, so I have a pretty
>good handle on what to do.
>
>There are two primary obligations of a mirror/redistribution of the
>Wikipedia content under the GFDL: rename it (that is, don't let visitors
>think that they are seeing the Official Wikipedia),

Ok, can you tell me a little more about what is required in re-naming?

- I assume that we have to remove the Wikipedia logo for one
- Are we required/allowed to use the name Wikipedia within our naming of
it? (As I see you have suggested "InfoWrangler Wikipedia Mirror")

>and add a "History" page.

No problem, we are happy to oblige with that.

>It gets slightly more complicated if you make your version of the site
>editable; then you have to make sure that the changed source content is
>regularly updated and readily available.

No, we don't wish to make our demo editable at this time. There may be a
reason to do that in the long term as we have a feature planned that would
allow previewing of relevant info (links) before an edit was
submitted. The aim being to assist the author to know what related
information already exists in Wikipedia before they submit new material.

> > We have of course modified some of the PHP code of Wikipedia so that
> > appropriate calls are made to InfoWrangler Server when a page is
> > viewed/created/edited. This is currently being packaged and will be
> > released to the Wikipedia development team when its ready.
>
>Excellent. Actually, as long as the InfoWrangler code is independent of
>Wikipedia, the terms of the GPL only obligate you to share modifications
>of the Wikipedia code if you ever sell/redistribute that code to third
>parties--not if you simply *run* the modified code.
>
>That is, we definitely welcome any improvements/extensions to the code
>you make, but simply running a modified version of the Wikipedia code
>puts you under no code-sharing obligations.

Understood. Since we have gone to the effort of performing the integration
and are benefiting from all the other work put into Wikipedia so far, we
thought that it might be a useful contribution to make to the project.

Langdon

----------------------------------------------------
Managing Director
Object Positive
Sydney, Australia

Ph: + 61 2 9659 2344
Fx: + 61 2 9659 2355

http://www.infowrangler.com

Hi Jimbo

>The Cunctator wrote:
> > Excellent! I'm noone official,
>
>I'm someone official, and what Cunc says sounds right to me!
>
> > It gets slightly more complicated if you make your version of the site
> > editable; then you have to make sure that the changed source content is
> > regularly updated and readily available.
>
> From what I can tell, they aren't trying to fork the content project,
>they just like to use it as a showcase for their technology, which is
>great. So, likely they will want to just point the editing links
>right back to us?
>
>--Jimbo

That is a good suggestion (pointing the edit links back to the main
site). It also leads us to the question of mirroring.

- Are there currently any Wikipedia mirror sites in existence? I see no
mention of any on the main Wikipedia site.
- If we were to host a mirror site what would the branding requirements
be? I.e. should it be an identical mirror? Or branded as a separate site
(as discussed in other posts)
- How would synchronisation be handled? Is there an established process
for this?
- How would the mirror be referenced? Just a link from the main site?
- Could anyone estimate the traffic levels that we would be required to
handle? (We may need to upgrade our hosting hardware)

I think that covers off the main issues. Any feedback and suggestions are
welcome.

Regards - Langdon

----------------------------------------------------
Managing Director
Object Positive
Sydney, Australia

Ph: + 61 2 9659 2344
Fx: + 61 2 9659 2355

http://www.infowrangler.com