Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Foundation

Licensing update: Final steps

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erik at wikimedia

Jun 9, 2009, 12:39 AM

Post #1 of 12 (687 views)
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Licensing update: Final steps

All,

after some internal discussion with the licensing update committee,
I'm proposing the following final site terms to be implemented on all
Wikimedia projects that currently use GFDL as their primary content
license, as well as the relevant multimedia templates:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation

Please note that these aren't quite yet ready for translation yet
(hence labeled draft). Please provide feedback here or on the talk
page, ideally by Thursday night UTC so we can move the process forward
on Friday.

In terms of implementing these changes, I suggest the following:

1) That the relevant site configuration variables are updated on June 15;
2) That, additionally, a central "Terms of use" page is created on
wikimediafoundation.org to house the "terms of use" above, which can
be replaced with a localized version whenever one is created;
3) That the relevant MediaWiki-messages are force-updated on all
projects to the English version above, or any translations already
created by June 15;
4) That the revised MediaWiki-messages are also translated through
translatewiki.net and hence additional translations will be rolled out
through normal i18n upgrades.

Regarding 3) and 4), this may best be achieved by creating new
MediaWiki messages. I would appreciate the advice of our translation
and tech team on this, and of course on the entire proposed process.
(I realize that there's not nearly enough time for any number of
translations, but we have a fixed deadline of beginning the roll-out
of this change by June 15.)

For multimedia, the licensing committee and the Wikimedia Commons
community are still discussing the best update strategy, but it will
probably involve a bot updating the existing templates. We're also
hoping to run a CentralNotice to explain the process to the
communities so that people can help to fix up pages and policies.

Thanks for any help in moving this forward,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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geniice at gmail

Jun 10, 2009, 5:26 PM

Post #2 of 12 (652 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/9 Erik Moeller <erik[at]wikimedia.org>:
> All,
>
> after some internal discussion with the licensing update committee,
> I'm proposing the following final site terms to be implemented on all
> Wikimedia projects that currently use GFDL as their primary content
> license, as well as the relevant multimedia templates:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation

Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long

The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably
agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at
ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.

Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing
with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.

Moving on to the Project:Terms of use

A Terms of use is a working document. Vision Statements can go elsewhere

"general public" horrid apart from the fact it is flat out false
(legal persons and governments are not normally considered general
public).

"For compatibility reasons, we also ask you to license it under the
GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant
sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts)."

Not good at all. Firstly the reasons are unimportant and secondly we
don't ask we require.

"Information for multimedia contributors"

I think you mean non-text media here (yes I'm aware this in turn
creates issues with tables). Strictly speaking images are not on their
own multimedia.

Information for re-users

Giving what is effectively legal advice is always kinda dicey. Getting
it wrong worse still.

"Attribution of text: To re-distribute an article page in any form,
provide 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.)"

Completely false. This at absolute best only applies to content
created after June 15 with no content imported from non wikimedia
sites.

"Attribution of rich media: Rich media files must be attributed in any
reasonable manner consistent with the chosen license specified by the
contributor(s)."

Reasonable to the medium or means. Kinda dicey. Should probably stick
to "must be attributed in a manner consistent with the chosen license
specified by the contributor(s).

btw "chosen license specified by the contributor(s)." is a horrific
bit of phrasing.

Attribution of externally contributed content yeah its a sensible
sub-clause but it comes in the wrong place. Since the Attribution of
text doesn't even consider the possibility of text that doesn't fall
under it's remit you've got a nice internal contradiction in the TOS.

Copyleft/Share and Share Alike:

You start talking about pages here when before you were talking about
articles. Consistent terminology should be used.

Terms for multimedia files

Another outright error. The eligible files definition claims say FAL
(and more importantly GPL) are eligible for additional licensing.

In practice that whole section would be better left to commons which
has a fair number of people who really know what they are doing with
regards to image licensing. Heh The the Licensing
update/Implementation phrasing is actually so bad it release the
wikipedia logo under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.

All in all the whole things suffers from being sloppy and appears
rushed. Poor and inconsistent phrasing, internal contradictions and
legaly questionable assertions.

The June 15 target is unrealistic at this point since some of the
issues are going to be tricky to fix (an awful lot of thought has gone
into the english Terms for edit screen over the years) or requires
actual decisions.

--
geni

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thomas.dalton at gmail

Jun 11, 2009, 11:21 AM

Post #3 of 12 (644 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/11 geni <geniice[at]gmail.com>:
> The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably
> agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at
> ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
>
> Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing
> with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.

I make it a 762% increase.

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geniice at gmail

Jun 11, 2009, 11:33 AM

Post #4 of 12 (640 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/11 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton[at]gmail.com>:
> 2009/6/11 geni <geniice[at]gmail.com>:
>> The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably
>> agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at
>> ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
>>
>> Your version clocks in at 112 words or a 380% increase. When dealing
>> with such widely used interface elements the trick is minimalism.
>
> I make it a 762% increase.

My figure was based on the full 23 words.

--
geni

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jim at scrubnugget

Jun 11, 2009, 11:53 AM

Post #5 of 12 (643 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 19:26, geni <geniice[at]gmail.com> wrote:

> The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably
> agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at
> ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.

The current terms are brief, yes, but only because the string "GFDL" in that
sentence links to a footnote. That footnote (located at the end of
[[MediaWiki:Edittools]]) currently says "GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
Back-Cover Texts.", with a link to the full license text.

Given that, it'd be trivial to change that sentence to "You irrevocably
agree to release your contributions under [link]our license[/link]" and
update the footnote accordingly.

--
Jim Redmond
jim[at]scrubnugget.com
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geniice at gmail

Jun 11, 2009, 1:59 PM

Post #6 of 12 (648 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/11 Jim Redmond <jim[at]scrubnugget.com>:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 19:26, geni <geniice[at]gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The current English wikipedia copyright terms are "You irrevocably
>> agree to release your contributions under the GFDL" which clocks in at
>> ten words. There are another 13 words of editing guidance.
>
>
> The current terms are brief, yes, but only because the string "GFDL" in that
> sentence links to a footnote. That footnote (located at the end of
> [[MediaWiki:Edittools]]) currently says "GNU Free Documentation License,
> Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
> with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
> Back-Cover Texts.", with a link to the full license text.
>
> Given that, it'd be trivial to change that sentence to "You irrevocably
> agree to release your contributions under [link]our license[/link]" and
> update the footnote accordingly.

Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically
required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people
start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the
average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really
matter.
--
geni

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jim at scrubnugget

Jun 11, 2009, 2:51 PM

Post #7 of 12 (646 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 15:59, geni <geniice[at]gmail.com> wrote:

> Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically
> required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people
> start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the
> average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really
> matter.

True, but my larger point wasn't about the footnote's contents - it was that
the current notice is as short as it is because it links elsewhere for the
actual license details. (Similarly, the current notice links elsewhere to
define "copyright" and "verifiable".) By extension, we can keep the revised
notice relatively brief by using links to refer elsewhere for license text
and/or discussion.

--
Jim Redmond
jim[at]scrubnugget.com
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geniice at gmail

Jun 11, 2009, 3:30 PM

Post #8 of 12 (642 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/11 Jim Redmond <jim[at]scrubnugget.com>:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 15:59, geni <geniice[at]gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not really. In the current notice the footnote stuff isn't technically
>> required. It's mostly there to provide something to point to if people
>> start trying to use the more annoying features of the GFDL. To the
>> average editor who wouldn't think of doing that it doesn't really
>> matter.
>
>
> True, but my larger point wasn't about the footnote's contents - it was that
> the current notice is as short as it is because it links elsewhere for the
> actual license details. (Similarly, the current notice links elsewhere to
> define "copyright" and "verifiable".) By extension, we can keep the revised
> notice relatively brief by using links to refer elsewhere for license text
> and/or discussion.
>
> --
> Jim Redmond
> jim[at]scrubnugget.com

I hope so but isn't something that needs to be done before implementation.

--
geni

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erik at wikimedia

Jun 12, 2009, 7:53 PM

Post #9 of 12 (617 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/10 geni <geniice[at]gmail.com>:
> Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long

<snip>

Some of this was helpful, thanks. I've responded on the talk page and
made some further edits.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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unionhawk.sitemod at gmail

Jun 12, 2009, 7:55 PM

Post #10 of 12 (619 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to
change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative
commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it
take to change the licensing?
- --Unionhawk

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2009/6/10 geni <geniice[at]gmail.com>:
>> Well the Terms for edit screen is unacceptably long
>
> <snip>
>
> Some of this was helpful, thanks. I've responded on the talk page and
> made some further edits.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
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erik at wikimedia

Jun 12, 2009, 8:05 PM

Post #11 of 12 (619 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

2009/6/12 Unionhawk <unionhawk.sitemod[at]gmail.com>:
> Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to
> change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative
> commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it
> take to change the licensing?

More than one to do it correctly. :-)
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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gordon.joly at pobox

Jun 13, 2009, 12:28 AM

Post #12 of 12 (615 views)
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Re: Licensing update: Final steps [In reply to]

At 20:05 -0700 12/6/09, Erik Moeller wrote:
>2009/6/12 Unionhawk <unionhawk.sitemod[at]gmail.com>:
>> Look, this should all be really simple... Just get the developers to
> > change the footer(s) and any admin copy the legal code of the creative
>> commons license into the current page... How many Wikipedians does it
>> take to change the licensing?
>
>More than one to do it correctly. :-)
>--
>Erik Möller
>Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Is there any compulsion to contact all previous
authors/editors/contributors directly?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly[at]pobox.com///

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