Difference between revisions of "License change/Decision"

Revision as of 14:22, 19 April 2009

The license of Anarchopedia for interfering with statist and capitalist entities is GFDL (otherwise, we don't care about it). The main reason for choosing that license is compatibility with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is now changing license to a kind of double licensing between GFDL and CC-BY-SA. Basically, the change is not relevant from our point, but if we don't change the license as Wikipedia changes it, the content from Anarchopedia won't be able to be included in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Because of that, we need to make a decision.

Discussion and voting starts at March 19th and ends at April 20th, 23:59. Option with the most of the votes will pass. One person may vote once per option.

Relevant pages

• Licensing update page for Wikimedia projects.
• Questions and answers made by Wikimedia community and WMF staff.
• License comparison at Meta Wikimedia.
• Timeline of the Wikimedia transition.

Discussion

About import into Anarchopedia: is it so big problem? Will anyone worry if Anarchopedia breaks licensing? Even if yes, I don't think that import articles is so important for Anarchopedia. I think it's better to write one's own small anarchistic article than copy a big and substantially useless one.

About export from Anarchopedia. This is not problem of Anarchopedia, this is problem of Wikipedia (and others). But! It will be problem only if Anarchopedia is against export. As mentioned above, 'license of Anarchopedia for interfering with statist and capitalist entities is GFDL (otherwise, we don't care about it)'. So, we are not against that out articles will be copyed. There is no problem of export at all!

Caesarion 16:55, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Importing articles is not an issue because Wikipedia will have a form of dual licensing, which means that only articles with explicitly CC-BY-SA-only contributions won't be able to be imported. The number of such articles will raise, but I don't think that it will be a serious issue in the future. --Milos Rancic 01:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

More important issue is related to spreading our work. The fact is that Wikipedia is the most important online knowledge resource. While Wikipedia per se is not a statist nor capitalist entity, Wikipedia follows strictly statist and capitalist rules. If we don't allow them explicitly to use our content, they won't use it. We may treat it as a problem which is not our, in the sense of Anarchopedian community, but I think that it is a problem in the sense of spreading our ideas. --Milos Rancic 01:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

According to Jimmy Wales, the reasons for Wikimedia to move from the GFDL to the CC-BY-SA license are:

"The GFDL was originally formulated to address a specific set of problems, including the possibility that some companies might use non-free documentation as a way of encumbering otherwise free software. The design decisions that went into development of a documentation license don't always address the problems that come up with massive multi-user collaboration projects like Wikipedia, and they may in fact create new problems that make free content less easy to use.

This is a large part of the reason why Creative Commons has designed a specific generic copyleft license for works which are not software, the CC-BY-SA license. The Creative Commons licenses have seen rapid adoption on the web, with more than 130 million works estimated to be licensed under one of them." --Benjamin 21:31, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll

Decision on this poll is valid only if Wikimedia changes their licensing.

I don't care

(These votes won't be counted.)

• (This is no vote, just a comment.) I don't like others to make profit from what I write, so I'd like to have the NC (non-commercial) option added when switching to CC. To me this is even more important than trying to get our articles copied to wikipedia. I'm thus not tempted to take part in this poll :-)

Switch to multiple licensing / public domain

(We would be able to import every articles of wikipedia and other sites (multiple licensing). We would be able to give our original articles to wikipedia and other sites (public domain). All options would need more defining, but this one will need especially more defining: which licenses are acceptable.)

1. The best option for me. --K2 22:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
2. --Esperanza 10:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
3. well, isnt it just the same like dual licensing just otherweise said? i think its not really relevant for a-pedia wether it will be run under GFDL or cc-by-sa. but if its only the question of formalities, i m for combining these two licenses this way. --Spongebob S. Pants 17:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

• This is not an option, according to the GFDL terms. The only option is to switch to CC-BY-SA. BTW, it (Wikipedia-like license) will look like share-alike PD in practice. --Milos Rancic 02:16, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
  • To be more precise: "Wikipedia-like" means any option which includes CC-BY-SA inside of it. --Milos Rancic 02:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
    • I understood now the sense of the proposal. However, just new materials may be under PD, which would make our life more complex.

At the other side, I don't think that it is an important issue to us. I don't expect that any anarchist would sue someone else because of license violation. We need licensing just because of explicitly saying to some statist and capitalist entities and entities which follow statist and capitalist rules that they may copy our content under specific conditions. For everybody else, licensing issues are completely irrelevant. --Milos Rancic 15:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

However, just new materials may be under PD, which would make our life more complex.

• Yes, I said "our original articles". Original articles in PD and the other articles under licenses.

Life is easy if you use templates: http://ita.anarchopedia.org/Tag_licenze --K2 00:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

We need licensing just because of explicitly saying to some statist and capitalist entities and entities which follow statist and capitalist rules that they may copy our content under specific conditions.

• Yes, you can say to them: "See the template at the end of the article. If you don't see any template, the article is in the PD.". This option is the only way to import every articles of wikipedia and other sites legally. For example, if you use GFDL or CC-BY-SA, you cannot import an article released under cc-by-nc. This is a great limit. In my opinion, anarchopedia don't want limits. The Knowledge don't want limits. Eat, dear anarchopedia, eat every content! :-) --K2 00:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • The formal problem with licenses is that we are able to use just one licensing type of external materials per article. For example, if we import GFDL text, we are not able to import CC-BY-(NC)-SA there, too. However, if we say that templates are solving "the complexity of our life" :) I agree that it is a valid option. At least, we don't care about licenses and we may take a pragmatic approach: we'll use any license while we wouldn't have problems with state enforcement. --Milos Rancic 06:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Stay at GFDL

(We would be able to import current Wikipedia articles, but we won't be able to give our articles to Wikipedia in the future and won't be able to import CC-BY-SA-only articles from Wikipedia and other sources.)

Switch to Wikipedia licensing

(Anarchopedia articles could be freely mixed with Wikipedia content and CC-BY-SA content from other sources, but we won't be able to import GFDL-only articles.)

1. Benjamin 14:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Switch to Wikipedia licensing with a possibility of importing GFDL texts

(As previous, but we would be able to import GFDL-only articles. The resulting GFDL-only Anarchopedia articles could not be exported to Wikipedia. This option makes our life very complex.)

Switch to the straight dual licensing

(We would be able to import current Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia would be able to take our articles, but we woult not be able to import CC-BY-SA-only articles from Wikipedia or other sources and GFDL-only articles from other sources.)

1. This is the best option, I suppose --Anna 22:38, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Hi! Me too.--F.1 23:22, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Switch to the straight dual licensing with a possibility to import GFDL and CC-BY-SA texts

(Combination of the two previous options. Anarchopedia GFDL-only articles could not be exported to wikipedia. It makes our life very complex.)

Switch to CC-BY-SA

(Similar to switching to Wikipedia licensing, but simpler solution with only one future license for Anarchopedia: Anarchopedia articles could be freely mixed with Wikipedia content and CC-BY-SA content from other sources, but we won't be able to import GFDL-only articles.)

1. Benjamin 14:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Switch to Public Domain

Licenses are a matter of copyright law, which is backed up with state violence. Why are we discussing this? Release to the public domain. Yes, this does mean that propertarian scum can profit from it, but I fail to see how we as anarchists can advocate blocking that through state violence.

In practice, your proposal is the same as the first one ("Switch to multiple licensing / public domain"). --Milos Rancic 08:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)