creative commons vs gfdl

[Dan Marshall]

Just out of curiosity, why is the wiki licensed under the Creative
Commons? I'm sure there's a good reason, but it keeps us from using GFDL
source material from the wikipedia, LDP, and a lot of man pages. I know
that a lot of people are going to think that it's better to do
everything from scratch, but not having to reinvent the wheel would save
a lot of time.

On related notes:
Is it legal to relicense Creative Commons material under the GFDL?

If we do decide to migrate to GFDL, I would personally recommend keeping
material created before the change over date available under the CC,
since it's less restrictive.

What's the policy for combining a mature article with a less mature one?
For example, merging two articles on the same subject but with slightly
different names (or captilization)? The person who notices the
duplication might not have enough time to completely merge the two
articles seamlessly. Just cutting and pasting the smaller article onto
the bigger article is ugly. And completely replacing the smaller article
seems a bit preemptive - there might be information in the smaller
article that the larger article lacks.

[Thomas Conneely]

Post by Dan Marshall
What's the policy for combining a mature article with a less mature
one? For example, merging two articles on the same subject but with
slightly different names (or captilization)? The person who notices
the duplication might not have enough time to completely merge the two
articles seamlessly. Just cutting and pasting the smaller article onto
the bigger article is ugly. And completely replacing the smaller
article seems a bit preemptive - there might be information in the
smaller article that the larger article lacks.

I think the best job of merging should be done at the time of merging,
though quickly merged articles are only ugly, not useless so it could be
left for editing later as long as you the editor makes sure he/she
returns tp finish the job. Thats the policy I use

---tc

[dircha]

Post by Dan Marshall
Just out of curiosity, why is the wiki licensed under the Creative
Commons? I'm sure there's a good reason, but it keeps us from using GFDL
source material from the wikipedia, LDP, and a lot of man pages. I know
that a lot of people are going to think that it's better to do
everything from scratch, but not having to reinvent the wheel would save
a lot of time.

I'm all for copyleft licenses and I have no problem using the GPL, but
section (4) alone of the GFDL has 15 clauses. Perhaps it is only so
popular because the Creative Commons licenses were not available at the
time (were they?). The Creative Commons ShareAlike-Attribution license
is much more straightforward to the effect, "Duplicate it, modify it,
distribute it, just include attribution."

Legal matters are sufficiently inaccessible to the general populace as
it is (so much so that all or neraly all states have Unlawful Practice
of Law statutes). Perhaps the significance of the complexity of the GFDL
is lost on me, but I don't think I would ever use it on one of my own
projects for just this reason.

Back when this list started, I was reading through the Wikipedia
commentary and discussion of how the GFDL applies to their own case, and
my impression was that even they didn't fully understand its
application. They seem in some respects to have just gone along with it
and optimistically assumed that it meant what they hoped it did.

dircha

[Jeremy]

Post by Dan Marshall
Just out of curiosity, why is the wiki licensed under the Creative
Commons? I'm sure there's a good reason, but it keeps us from using GFDL
source material from the wikipedia, LDP, and a lot of man pages. I know
that a lot of people are going to think that it's better to do
everything from scratch, but not having to reinvent the wheel would save
a lot of time.

I went with the CC for a few reasons. First, it's extremely
straight forward. Next, the GFDL is aimed at larger texts (such as
software manuals and textbooks). I wanted single articles to be easily
redistributable. Under the GFDL you have to distribute the license
itself, a CHANGELOG and a "source" version for anything you redistribute.
This could mean 10-20 pages of text for a 2 page article. With the CC (at
least with the soon to be released 2.0 version, I still have not gotten a
straight answer on the 1.0 version) you can simply include a line such as
"This article is from the LinuxQuestions.org Wiki, is located at
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Title and is licensed until the CC
sa-by license". In short, the license is a little less convenience for
contributors, but worlds better for users. The drawback of not being able
to use GFDL material is unfortunate I agree. We can try to get approval
from original authors, which we have gotten in some cases at least, but I
agree that is not ideal. If anyone has ideas on how to improve the
situation let me know.

--jeremy