On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > This is a request for comment. I've posted a draft proposal for the > license update here: > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update > > It is not intended to be final, but I hope we can arrive at a final > version by February 1. > > We would appreciate questions, comments, feedback. If there are > obvious edits which you feel would make the proposal clearer, please > do go ahead and make them, but please be careful about edits that > substantially alter the proposal itself.
I really have a problem with the clause related to referring to the authors just via link to the appropriate page history. (It is not in the sense of necessity to list all authors everywhere.) Imagine that online edition of Wikipedia doesn't exist anymore. While it is not so probable and I hope that it won't happen, it is one of the relevant options when we are talking about contributing authors of the content. And, of course, I may list a number of possible reasons how it may happen. Also, may anyone guarantee that Wikipedia will exist 90 years after death of the last author (less conservative, around year 2100; more conservative, around year 2200)? So, I don't think that *just* linking to the page history is a reasonably addressed issue. Here are the issues which should be addressed: * Thomas already gave distinction between online and offline. * For the case if online Wikimedia projects don't exist anymore, appropriate attribution won't be pointing to the history of the article. It may be solved by giving more detailed information how to attribute authors if it is not possible to attribute them. It may be solved by giving an option to link to any database which consists the whole history of an article. It may be solved, also, by publishing paper edition of authors lists. * For the case of offline copies, it should be solved reasonably in relation to medium. If someone is copying content on any electronic device, I don't think that it is unreasonable to add there full list of authors. If there were 1.000.000 of authors with 100 characters each, it is 100 MB of uncompressed document, which may be compressed a lot (maybe even to 10-20MB file). * If it is about printed work, it should point at least to the appropriate printed work. It is really not any kind of reasonable solution to allow pointing from less advanced medium to more advanced medium. By the way, even I think that in relation to all other issues Mike and Erik did a great job, this issue is really poorly addressed. Even this is the last main concern in relation to the licensing migration, you just put a simple goal "clarify that attribution via reference to page histories is acceptable if there are more than five authors". This is simply not an appropriate addressing of the issue. While I don't care how my contributions would be mentioned, WMF has the obligation to the authors of the content to protect their rights reasonably. WMF is not the author of the content and can't act as it is the sole author. Copyright owners are contributors and protection of *their* rights should be at the center of any licensing issue, not protection or promotion of WMF and its projects. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l