License update at Wikipedia in sight

[Daniel Mietchen]

As summarized here, WP are considering to switch to CC-BY-SA.
Quote:

This shift in licensing was not possible before the introduction of the GFDL version 1.3 in Fall 2008 by the Free Software Foundation. This new GFDL release provides a specific clause for any "Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site", specifically any public wiki, that is currently licensed under the GFDL to relicense their content under the CC-BY-SA license if they desire, provided that the content was added to the wiki before November 1, 2008. This clause has an expiration date; sites can only choose to switch until August 2009. The FAQ for the new license notes specifically that Wikipedia is eligible.

I think that deadline would also apply to GFDL-licensed content here at CZ.

[John Stephenson]

So any GFDL external articles, i.e. those sourced from WP, could also be licensed under CC-by-SA separately by us before August?

If so, is this worth doing?

[Tom Morris]

If so, is this worth doing?

Yes. It means that if Wikipedia does similarly, we could have no legal barrier to interchanging articles freely between WP and CZ dual-licensed as both CC and FDL.

I think Citizendium ought to do so.

[John Stephenson]

And if we don't, presumably we'd be in the rather odd position of hosting WP material under GFDL only when the original articles on WP are newly licensed under CC-by-sa. Meanwhile, they'd be able to copy CZ material and host it under CC-by-sa but not GFDL... the opposite of what the wikis currently do for new articles (CC for CZ, GFDL for WP).

What about material that started on Wikipedia after November 2008, is copied to CZ under GFDL, and is subsequently copied back to WP after they adopt CC-by-SA and after August 2009? Would this material, modified on Citizendium, be relicensed under CC-by-SA? Or would WP be forced to host material only under GFDL?

[Eugene van der Pijll]

And if we don't, presumably we'd be in the rather odd position of hosting WP material under GFDL only when the original articles on WP are newly licensed under CC-by-sa. Meanwhile, they'd be able to copy CZ material and host it under CC-by-sa but not GFDL... the opposite of what the wikis currently do for new articles (CC for CZ, GFDL for WP).

Although Wikipedia could do that (copy CZ articles), it's unlikely that they would. The proposal is to change WP to GFDL / CC dual licensing. CZ material is only licensed under CC, so it can't be published under the default WP license. It is unlikely that they would create exceptions for a relatively small number of pages.

What about material that started on Wikipedia after November 2008, is copied to CZ under GFDL, and is subsequently copied back to WP after they adopt CC-by-SA and after August 2009? Would this material, modified on Citizendium, be relicensed under CC-by-SA? Or would WP be forced to host material only under GFDL?

The November 2008 deadline is only relevant for works that were not originally published on the relicensing site (in this case, Wikipedia). The material added on CZ do not constitute a separate work, so I think that Wikipedia can import the changed version and relicense it. After August 2009, however, you are no longer allowed to relicense. So the CZ article (GFDL only) can no longer be imported into WP after August 2009 (unless an exception is made for this article; again, unlikely).

By the way, the vote has closed, and the results will be published in a few days.

[Eugene van der Pijll]

By the way, the vote has closed, and the results will be published in a few days.

Update: the result has been published, there was a large majority in favour of the change, and the Wikimedia board has decided te relicence Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects to CC-BY-SA 3.0 on June 15.

[Daniel Mietchen]

I think it's high time for CZ to make steps towards a similar decision. WP are already discussing how to systematically incorporate CZ contents (thereby to some extent reviving the "fork" idea that was originally rejected).

[Caesar Schinas]

What is the effect of this on CZ?
Presumably any articles which are based on WP articles can (must?) now be changed to CC-BY-SA here on CZ... but attribution is still required, so we still need to mark which articles do come from WP in part. But the same applies to many other projects licensed under CC-BY-SA - shouldn't our solution be compatible with all sources under compatible licenses, rather than just WP?

The new rules (will) require...

...credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article or articles you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.)

So we'll need to keep a record of which WP article we're using, not just that it is WP.

And shouldn't we be able to mark only sections of a page as being from WP?

{{wpsection|Article Name|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...}}, or something similar?

[Caesar Schinas]

Just noticed this policy on importing content from CC-BY-SA sources such as CZ into Wikipedia : (emphasis mine)

You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license, even if it is not available under the GNU Free Documentation License. You are under no obligation whatsoever to obtain such content also under the GFDL. However, you may not import text that is only available under the GFDL. If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content.

So if the edit summary is sufficient attribution for importing CZ content to WP, presumably it's sufficient for importing WP content to CZ?