Wikiversity talk:IRC meeting:New licence for Wikiversity Beta

"The big disadvantage of GFDL is that, when printed text, picture, etc all the license text should be printed." <-- the "print a copy of the license" was intended for large documents such as user manuals where a few pages of license text would be no big deal. I doubt if anyone ever has or ever will object to a small GFDL work being copied without the text of the license. In short, what is described as "The big disadvantage of GFDL" strikes me as FUD. "When the incubation project (here Wikiversity Beta) will be under the terms of CC licence you will have the possibility to change to GFDL, PD...." <-- How do you switch from CC-BY to PD? Why should we use CC-BY rather than CC-BY-SA? Is there no value in making sure that you know what kind of license your work will be made available under in the future? Why does the proposal make no mention of the fact that efforts are underway to create a path for shifting Wikimedia wiki website content from GFDL to CC-BY-SA? --JWSchmidt 01:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"The big disadvantage of GFDL" - well, maybe bad words used. But try to print me a catalog on two pages using pictures released under GFDL.

How do you switch from CC-BY to PD? - by termination of CC-BY licence.

Why should we use CC-BY rather than CC-BY-SA? - CC-BY-SA doesnt give you an opportunity to use other licenses. Its importatn to state, that de.wv want to have this licences, en.wv different. So why not to give a chance to the communities to choose their own license. With CC-BY its not limited.

Is there no value in making sure that you know what kind of license your work will be made available under in the future? - well, yeah. You are probably pointing adaptations and collections can lost free licence and might be offered with copyright. Thats right, but it is important to stayted, that its still free. You are giving the adopter freedome to change it and release his work under his licence. If we understant it from this point copyleft is also kind of limitation. But you are right, this is for further discussion. But on the end I should stayted that we are talking about beta. There will be few incubationg pages, which can approve after leaving copyleft.

Why does the proposal make no mention of the fact that efforts are underway to create a path for shifting Wikimedia wiki website content from GFDL to CC-BY-SA? - sorry, I was looking for the link and its allready there. To be completely correct we should also link to foundation mailing list where its stayted that this change of licences is aginst several country juristidcions and may be illegal. The model offered here may work llegaly:

as Beta is not having many pages:

• from one exact day, we start to release all the content under cc-by or cc-by-sa
• all new pages will be released under this new license
• old pages and new revisions of old pages will be released under gfdl
• within the years there will be a shift from pages released under gfdl
• and maybe in the future gfdl pages will be vanished like some images on Commons.--Juan 02:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

And one more thing. I picked up this phrase: "I doubt if anyone ever has or ever will object to a small GFDL work being copied without the text of the license." - well the problem is that you cant copy from Wikimedia projects. You can just print. I think when PediaPress will be relesed people will use it to make a small colections and they will like to share them or offer them to third parties. But its just my opinion. E.g. me personally, I wanted to use some pictures from commons for the third parites, but there were released under gfdl.--Juan 03:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

So finally I have changed it all.--Juan 11:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion output

I am wandering if there can be any kind of output from the dicsussion - a page sumarising all or a community offering help and answers to other Wikimedia communities.--Juan 11:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

free to change licenses or free?

The freedom to relicense works under different types of licenses might be a goal for the people who created this proposal, but it is not a goal for the Wikimedia Foundation. A significant part of the success of Wikipedia grew from the strengths of copyleft licensing. Contributors to a copyleft-licensed wiki websites know that their work will remain free (both for commercial and non-commercial use) and that care will be taken with respect to attribution. This is a foundation that contributors view as desirable features, not inconvenient annoyances...if you do not agree with this approach then you are free to leave Wikimedia and go do other wiki websites that use other licenses. Wikiversity was conceived and proposed and approved as a Wikimedia Foundation sister project that would draw upon resources and have content that is compatible with the GFDL resources at Wikipedia. Particularly for Wikiversity, which should respect the importance of attribution, I do not understand why anyone is pointing to an ability to license as PD and saying this is advantageous. Proper attribution is a fundamental part of scholarship. Creating a system where people are asked to contribute content under conditions where they might later be asked to change how their work is licensed, in particular possible changing from assured attribution to no attribution would be very disruptive: first people will be reluctant to contribute if they feel they face a future argument over how their work will be licensed and secondly, such debates about changing how collaboratively authored pages are licensed seldom lead to agreement, only discord. I do not understand why "freedom to change licenses" should be valued more at Wikiversity than the freedoms of use that the Wikimedia Foundation stands for. The argument seems to be that Wikiversity should abandon the licensing strategy that made Wikiversity possible, that Wikiversity was planned upon, in order to make it easier for future contributors to Wikiversity to re-license Wikiversity content in ways that were never intended for a Wikimedia Foundation project. As far as I can tell, this approach can only satisfy people who do not respect the re-use freedoms defended by a copyleft license and the Wikimedia Foundation and people who want the ability to capture Wikiversity content under non-copyleft licenses, including some licenses that make content re-use less free than either the GFDL or CC-BY-SA. There is a huge amount of online educational content that is not licensed for free (libre) commercial and free non-commercial re-use. Many people come to Wikiversity after having been exposed to non-copyleft educational content and they are often tempted to suggest changes to Wikiversity licensing without understanding or respecting the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation or the the advantages of keeping licensing compatibility between sister projects like Wikipedia and Wikiversity. For the reasons mentioned above, I feel it is disruptive to seek ways of making it easy for future Wikiversity contributors to abandon the Wikimedia Foundation licensing goals while trying to continue to pretend to be the Wikimedia Foundation sister project that was approved for existence by the Foundation. In my view, this is really a debate that should have taken place years ago when the Wikiversity proposal was written. Wikinews (CC-BY) was an unusual situation because that project was planned as one that would not draw upon the copyleft content of the other Wikimedia Foundation projects. This is not the case for Wikiversity, so I do not see how such a fundamental change can be compatible with the approved Wikiversity project proposal. In my view, one of the explicit goals of this Wikiversity beta website was to function as a coordination point for making all language versions of Wikiversity united in their fundamental approach to educational resources. Creating a system for licensing incompatibility would run counter to the unifying purpose of Wikiversity beta hub. --JWSchmidt 16:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)