On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 7:35 PM, geni <geni...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/2/3 Brian <brian.min...@colorado.edu>: >> Where can I read about what, exactly, the spirit of the GFDL is? > > Start with the license preamble "Secondarily, this License preserves > for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work,"
Interesting you should choose to quote this while conveniently failing to include the *primary* purpose: "The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially." We are moving to the CC-BY-SA license to improve compatibility and foster reuse, yes? The 'spirit' clause gives us a good deal of freedom "to address new problems or concerns" and one of the primary residual problems that many (most?) of us have relates to the secondary purpose. Surely where the secondary purpose is at odds with the primary purpose it is the primary purpose that should prevail? Given that full attributions are both largely worthless and onerous to the point of forbidding reuse in many circumstances (e.g. paragraph quotes, most physical mediums, compilations, etc.) and partial attributions are in many ways worse than no attributions at all, surely attributing Wikipedia is the best way to achieve our primary goals? If your concern is that we will run out of content because we are not attributing individuals then I wouldn't worry about that - there are more than enough selfless people working tirelessly for no other reason than to make the world a better place. Kudos to Erik for the excellent summary, Sam _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
