Comments on: Wikipedia and Creative Commons http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/01/wikipedia-and-creative-commons/ Doug Kaye's Weblog Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:38:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tomasz Kozlowski http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/01/wikipedia-and-creative-commons/comment-page-1/#comment-41748 Tomasz Kozlowski Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:44:13 +0000 http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/01/wikipedia-and-creative-commons/#comment-41748 Well, the problem is the situation is not as simple as many (including Lawrence Lessig as far as I see from his latest post) think. The content of Wikipedia won't be 'relicenced' from GFDL to CC BY-SA: the GFDL is to be made compatible with CC BY-SA. If, let's say, GFDL 2.0 will be compatible with CC BY-SA 4.0, there will be no need for aproval of the Wikipedia community. On <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights" title="Copyrights" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia:Copyrights</a> we read that "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, <b>Version 1.2 or any later</b>" (bolded by myself). So, anybody who wrote anything in Wikipedia has agreed to licence his/her contributions to Wikipedia not under the GFDL 1.2 only, but under the next versions of the GFDL, which - as we can read - may be compatible with CC BY-SA, as well. If the CC BY-SA-compatible version of the GFDL will come into life, the content of Wikipedia will be <b>multi</b>licenced, not <b>re</b>relicenced: we'll be able to use it under GFDL 1.2, the GFDL X.X and CC BY-SA X.X And the opinion of the whole Wikipedia community will be absolutely unimportant. Hope it makes the situation at least a little bit clearer. Tomasz W. Kozlowski a Wikimedia contributor :-) Well, the problem is the situation is not as simple as many (including Lawrence Lessig as far as I see from his latest post) think. The content of Wikipedia won’t be ‘relicenced’ from GFDL to CC BY-SA: the GFDL is to be made compatible with CC BY-SA.

If, let’s say, GFDL 2.0 will be compatible with CC BY-SA 4.0, there will be no need for aproval of the Wikipedia community. On Wikipedia:Copyrights we read that “Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later” (bolded by myself). So, anybody who wrote anything in Wikipedia has agreed to licence his/her contributions to Wikipedia not under the GFDL 1.2 only, but under the next versions of the GFDL, which – as we can read – may be compatible with CC BY-SA, as well.

If the CC BY-SA-compatible version of the GFDL will come into life, the content of Wikipedia will be multilicenced, not rerelicenced: we’ll be able to use it under GFDL 1.2, the GFDL X.X and CC BY-SA X.X

And the opinion of the whole Wikipedia community will be absolutely unimportant.

Hope it makes the situation at least a little bit clearer.

Tomasz W. Kozlowski
a Wikimedia contributor :-)

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