Talk:Licensing update/Result/Archives/2009

The power of minority

13242 users or 0.07% of 20 mln registered users have made decision which affects all wiki-authors. From my point of view it is vicious style for making decision.--212.248.125.42 09:23, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

you are stole author rights from 10 % of authors?--Freedomuser 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood. We will be dual-licensing (GFDL & CC-BY-SA) the text comparing to current model, which is only GFDL. There is no "stealing" or anything similar involved. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Terms of Use

Re-users will be required to credit you, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the article you are contributing to, and you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium. No! I don't agree. This is the decisive step to an expropriation of the authors in favour of commercial use without even naming the authors (not even a link to the history ...). It is not even compatible with German author's rights, as author's rights, especially concerning naming of author, cannot be totally suspended. This needs a vote, not the license as such. But in this case, a vote would not change anything because it's simply illegal.--Mautpreller 19:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not illegal. Yes, an author can decide whether and how he wishes to be attributed; but this also includes the author's right of explicitly stating that attribution "through a hyperlink or URL to the article" is enough for him, e.g. through a declaration as quoted by you. There is no legal requirement to name me as the author of some given content if I do not wish to be named. It is within my rights, according to German law too, to be content with a hyperlink - or with no attribution whatsoever, if I wish so. Were it differently, there could be e.g. no advertisements without naming all the photographers... Gestumblindi 23:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's illegal all the same. You can abandon your right to be named. But a general "Term of Service" that urges you to abandon your right to be named is immoral and therefore void.--Mautpreller 07:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers#Attribution, last Q/A. --Baruneju 10:34, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Mautpreller, I think it depends on whether the declaration is seen as a third party's "terms of service" you are urged to agree to, or your own terms of use for people using your content. I think that the latter is the case. Gestumblindi 11:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi: The answer is obvious. It's a general TOS text by the Foundation which cannot be changed by the author. Which amounts to: It's a third party who urges the author to agree. @Baruneju: But how do I have to understand the sentence quoted above by me from the proposed TOS? There is a contradiction! Q/A: Will the contributor be asked to renounce their attribution rights while pressing the "submit" button? No. On the other hand: By submitting an edit, you agree to release your contribution under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and the GNU Free Documentation License. Re-users will be required to credit you, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the article you are contributing to, and you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium. --Mautpreller 11:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That's why I created the "attribution" section of the FAQ (however, not every question I put into was accepted/answered) and why (amongst other things) I voted "no" in the poll. Long discussions were made about how to attribute and to whom (check foundation-l and the faq talk), and how this change (attribution by link) is compatible with GFDL (yes for Erik and many others, like people thinking attribution is just ego, no for others). But WMF have lawyers and we not, so just stick with it or avoid to contribute further. I'm picking the second option. However, I wish the best of luck to every contributor. --Baruneju 12:14, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

So the TOS should be changed. Otherwise, there is an open contradiction.--Mautpreller 12:33, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not terms of service, it's the agreement you licence the content you submit under. "Please note that all contributions to Meta are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Meta:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." I'm sure a modified version of something along these lines will what you will be agreeing to in future. If you don't agree, don't submit. Sean Heron 17:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

This is not the point. Free editing and free use are the very idea of the project. The point is attribution, not free use. Attribution only by link to the article might amount to no attribution. Not even the history is mentioned, let alone the main authors; the only one who will be mentioned is Wikipedia. But not Wikipedia wrote the text and did the pictures. I don't agree that a link to the article is sufficient attribution (and a general clause like "you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium" is void because it is immoral, "sittenwidrig" in German). --Mautpreller 19:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

That's two seperate points - one that you disagree (from a personal point of view) with the proposed mode of attribution (ie quite indirect attribution - people are pointed to the article, but would from there have to stumble upon the edit history by themselves). On this I have not uttered my opinion.

Your other point is that by German law, publishing something under a licence with the aforementioned terms is illegal (void as immoral). While I'm not a lawyer, I disagree with your statement on that (may I again try to point out that what you are agreeing to here is not a term of service - because which service are you recieving? These are no "Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen" to which your argument might apply). Regards Sean Heron 22:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

But they are. Wikipedia tries to urge authors to renounce any kind of attribution rights in relation to third parties. These are "Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen", making use of a dominant position. While this is not a problem as far as free editing and use are concerned as these condition have been the very core of the project from the beginning, it is definitely a problem as far as attribution is concerned. --Mautpreller 07:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I could try to further convince you, but I think it will be easier to agree to disagree. Regards Sean Heron 10:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Vote verification

Having cast my vote, I received a chunk of encrypted text that would allow me to verify that my vote has been correctly taken into account. How do I do that? --X-Man 20:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The encrypted receipt was in case something went wrong with the voting server, as nothing went wrong it's not needed. --Cool110110 09:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Wrong. It was not only intended for problems, but as a general verification method. (I haven't tried this myself, but this my understanding of the process...) Attached to this email (sent to the License Update Committee's mailing list) is "the official log of the vote". If you download it (it's 20 MB), and decompress it, you should be able to find a copy of the encrypted text that you were given included within it, showing that your vote was included in the tally. Please post with your results if you try this. Thanks! JesseW 17:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I decided to exercise my right to verification just to make sure that I have it. I downloaded and unpacked the file and verified that (1) there are indeed 17462 encrypted votes, like the result page says, and (2) my vote appears in the file exactly once. Now shouldn't the link to the official log be posted somewhere on the result page so that others could verify their votes, too? However, this is not really enough. To make sure that each vote has indeed been counted according to the choice the user had made, three files should be published (or one file with labels on each vote), separating the encrypted votes into Yes, No, and No opinion categories. That way, each user will be able to verify that there are indeed as many votes in each category as the result page says, and that his or her vote appears exactly once in the category corresponding to the choice he or she made. --X-Man 22:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

What you describe is probably a good idea. Sorting the encrypted blocks would take a bit of time, but should be doable. A more general problem though is that none of the WMF allow uploads of text files (compressed or otherwise) so there isn't really a good way to store it here. (Text can be put directly into a wiki page, but the content is much too large for that.) Dragons flight 23:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I think that this is important, as vote verification is currently only by trust. User A1 01:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Woot!

Where is the party at ?!! Great to hear the Board decided to implement immediately! So - far better use of content from Mid June onwards - and perhaps a look towards a better chance of wikipedia to wikinews text use :D! Sean Heron 22:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Layman's terms

Can someone please summarize the change in layman's terms? I understand licensing, but I'm failing to recognize what this change means. That's why I voted "don't care". Bob the Wikipedian 03:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you help yourself at the Q&A section? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I wish I'd known about this vote

I'd have opposed. Not that my vote would have mattered, but perhaps I could have made an impact by sharing this. Eh, who am I kidding? Anyway, this stinks. --Leavestock 07:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Trying to read it, I find a lot of weird reasoning, such as referring to Proudhon as the only alternative to copyright, and ideas as "viral". That is Dawkins reasoning and if ideas are viral and contagious, why is his own ideas not? Now Dawkins explain religions as memetic parasites, why then are not GPL and GFDL memetic parasites? The reasoning in that article is flawed. And the opponents of GNU Free Documentation License are generally concerned about technicalities of the license rather than the concept as such, for example the strict regime of listing this-and-that contributor in absurdum. I've experienced such troubles with some militarist GFDL fool administrator in the Swedish wikipedia, where he acted as if I should solve his problem. That site is just extremely-GPL/GFDL biased, without any viable analysis of the practical problems of exercising a rigid and malformed license. rursus 09:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

If the author were GPL-biased, then I assume she would have released under it, instead of to the public domain; but you would have had to try a little harder to read the article in order to spot that. The article is anti-CC, not pro-GPL. She doesn't even present GPL as a lesser evil than CC; rather, she presents CC as a greater evil than GPL, which is a subtle but important distinction. She finds them both evil, but the CC is somewhat less hostile to capitalism, which she is quite hostile to, as am I, which is why I wish I would have gotten a chance to share the article. At any rate, the vote went your way, so I'm not sure why you responded here, unless you really did read it and understand it and found its arguments to be powerful enough that you wanted to scare others away from reading it. --Leavestock 20:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see. But neither CC nor GPL is anti-capitalism, since capitalism traditionally is founded on technology and science which is kind of Artistic License Open Source. GPL just prohibits restrictions to certain intellectual rights. rursus 19:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

How the vote went wouldn't have mattered since the choices were "Now" and "(Maybe slightly changed) later". The Board had already decided that the change to CC would happen, question was how and when. --89.246.206.252 12:06, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

How can I help?

I have a few images that I GFDL:ed only. Can I add a CC license or must I "create a new" work having a combined GFDL/CC-BY-SA license? Another thing: I think that attribution clause is nerdy and foolish, can I add a clause that I'm not so vain as to need attribution? rursus 09:40, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

If you don't want attribution, you can use the template {{PD-self}} on Wikimedia Commons. Then anyone is able to use your images without attribution and with no restrictions whatsoever. Gestumblindi 02:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Public domain is way something different then CC-by-Share-Alike. Please don't pretend otherwise. I think the original question is answered by Ohana. Sean Heron 17:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You can modify your images to incorporate new licenses. I don't think anyone will stop you from adding CC license on top of GFDL. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, that sounds fine. Theoretically: since I'm the copyright owner, I should be able to, and practically changing it to what the majority want, won't present much opposition ... maybe. I'll also consider a general clause to skip the attribution part, which is kind of dense, when many persons add their changes to "my" image. rursus 19:26, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

One note, it is in Commons not a regular thing to change a license. (the can't be revoked..) it is best to give a explanetion in the edit summary so people will know why you do it.

It's not against the rules but it isn't a thing that happens a lot also, and people will be like fast with reverting (I did a few times).

Best Regards,

Huib talk 19:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Voter Distribution

I think that whatever the result that you got 17k votes on this technical subject across so many wikis and metas, especially that the 'main' English wikipedia was just 43% showing great ownership from the 'minor' wikis is GREAT news.

Cosnahang 15:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Multiple votes?

I have a Dutch and English Wikipedia account, with the same usernames, was it possible to vote multiple times with different language accounts?

No, for multiple votes with the same Account (or same username at different projects - assuming it was the same user), only the last vote was counted. This was why it took them a while to advertise the results I think (sorting out which votes were double, etc.). Regards Sean Heron 16:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yew, we struck out duplicate votes like these. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki

I'd propose discussing it on each language on Wikipedia (if it's of course worldwide regulation), Sir Lothar 17:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Practical difference

What's the practical difference in this licensing change, in plain English? Will it only be CCBYSA or CCBYSA and GFDL both? — Rlevse • Talk • 02:51, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

All original text contributions by wiki editors past and future will be dual licensed CC-BY-SA-3.0 + GFDL. Dragons flight 03:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

...With the pro of additionally allowing CC-BY-SA materials from exterior sources. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The difference between going to CC-SA-BY and going to dual-licensing

Under GFDL 1.3, we have been given the option to move to CC-SA-BY, and it can apparently also be interpreted as giving the option to dual-license GFDL 1.3 / CC-SA-BY. What are the differences?

Assumptions

There are a few assumptions in all of this that I find rather unlikely, but we'll have to accept them for this discussion. So, we'll assume that:

1. each page of a wiki, each entry of an encyclopedia etc., can be presented as a separate document;
2. a copy of an image (or other non-text medium) can be inserted into a document without that copy becoming part of that document;
3. small violations of our license are of no concern, provided the intention is clear.

Without 1, inserting but a single sentence under CC-SA-BY-only will make the entire wiki CC-SA-BY-only. Without 2 inserting CC-SA-BY-only images would make the document CC-SA-BY-only. Without 3, any document repaired by removing a copyright violation, rather than reverting to an older version, would under GFDL 1.2 have become non-GFDL. Especially the first two I find absurd, but it's the third that will now bite back hard.

CC-SA-BY-only

Under CC-SA-BY-only the problem would be no different from GFDL 1.2: We simply have to assume small violations are no problem, and that all our pages can be considered copyleft. In this respect, going to CC-SA-BY gives us no bigger problems than staying with GFDL 1.2 would have.

GFDL 1.3 / CC-SA-BY

In GFDL 1.3, violations can indeed be negated by removing them. That is, starting with this version, a document will become GFDL again once the copyright violation has been removed. This is not valid for CC-SA-BY, which behaves like GFDL 1.2. Obviously, if we dual-licence we can't argue that we don't know that the licenses are different, and therefore, we wíll no longer be able to assume that 3: small violations of our licenses are of no concern, provided the intention is clear. If we want two licenses, we'll have to accept the differences.

What does this difference mean for the status of the pages? Counter to CC-SA-BY-only, we can have four different statuses:

• GFDL 1.3 / CC-SA-BY - The intended combination.
• CC-SA-BY-only - counter to the explanation given with the proposal, inserting CC-SA-BY-only elements into a document will change the entire document to CC-SA-BY: GFDL 1.3 does have a provision to change the license, but not to add elements under a different license. Any content copied from these pages will propagate this status to other pages.
• GFDL 1.3-only - both licenses fail on a copyright violation, but GFDL 1.3 will be reinstated after the violation has been corrected, where CC-SA-BY is not. This will make any repaired pages GFDL 1.3-only. Any content copied from these pages will propagate this status to other pages.
• Transgressions: If a single-license page get content added under the other license, both licenses are revoked, which means Wikimedia can not legally display such pages.

Conclusion

I find it very unlikely that under dual-license every editor copying information from one page to an other will carefuly check the statuses of both pages and indicate resulting changes in status. This would suggest that we can only use these licenses legally if a reader can retrace that information from the histories of the pages. To this end, every editor copying information from one page to an other would have to indicate the source page in the target page history, plus, we would have to guarantee the availability of all page histories, even where the page itself may have been deleted. Apart from this being extremely unpractical for the reuser, I find it unlikely that either of these will actually happen. This would mean that, for any non-trivial page, the reader will be unable to determine what license is valid. As this is in itself is a violation of both licenses, the result would be that none of the pages could legally be displayed for reading.

• Under single-license CC-SA-BY, Wikimedia projects can continue in the same more or less legal way.
• Under dual-license GFDL 1.3 / CC-SA-BY, the copyright status of Wikimedia projects reverts to Copyrighted, with the exception of the parts that are explicitely Public Domain / No Right Reserved.

I know very well that the only way to make the Wikimedia projects fully match their licenses would be to make them Public Domain / No Right Reserved, and that in actual use, most readers consider Wikimedia projects to indeed have that license. But if the intention is to make documents available, yet limit what the reader can do with them, then single-license CC-SA-BY can be used to do so, whereas dual-license GFDL 1.3 / CC-SA-BY can not.

Mysha