On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Ed Pastore <[email protected]>wrote:
> When we opened our wiki, we made it CC:BY-NC-SA. It was something someone > suggested, and it sounded right: very open, very non-commercial. But, hm... > apparently a lot of the free content people have a problem with NC, so we're > game to change it to BY-SA or even something more open. For the record, our > wiki has always had this copyright page, which has been basically unchanged > for the history of the wiki: > http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Metagovernment:Copyrights > > Great! > My question is about the logistics of porting our wiki. People familiar > with the concept have suggested that it is not possible to simply remove a > copyright restriction from a wiki because when people contributed to the > wiki, they may have had the expectation that their contribution remain under > that restriction. Is that right, and if so, can you help us work out a way > to port? > > I have come up with some possibilities, but I don't know if any of them > work and/or are practical. > > 1. We just remove the NC. When people contributed content, they gave it to > us, and we now have the ability to change the copyright if we please. Um... > would that fly? I suspect some may have problems with it, but what precisely > would be the consequences? For the record, we are not incorporated: we are > an adhocracy that is very loosely governed by consensuses formed on an open > list server (though some day we may incorporate). We also are not associated > with any country: our members span the globe. > You might be able to do this and hope that nobody complains, but probably not the straight and narrow path unless all contributors have been assigning copyright to ... I highly doubt that, given lack of formal organization to assign copyright to. :) > > 2. We port all the content to a new wiki with an open license, but on each > old/ported page, we put an exception note at the bottom saying that this > content is restricted by NC. However, if we did that, could we ever remove > that tag? At what point would the page be edited enough to make us free to > change license? > A new wiki would probably be really suboptimal. If you want to take something like this path, require that all contributions to existing pages be dual licensed under BY-NC-SA and BY-SA, all new pages under BY-SA, and remove BY-NC-SA from the former when you (ie some interested community members monitoring the situation) feel a page has changed enough that none of the BY-NC-SA contributions remain, or that all previous contributors to page have agreed to offer past contributions under BY-SA (ie, this and the next item together). 3. We ask ever contributor to the wiki to release their contributions to the > new license. This can be problematic because some contributors have left the > project and have not responded to recent queries. > > 4. Same as #3, but we put a deadline, and if anyone does not respond by the > reasonably-long deadline (say one month), then they automatically consent to > the port. Note that this is a very common governance mechanism used within > our project (that is, when we have a consensus, we allow a time for dissent, > and if there is none, we declare approval). > > Can anyone comment on any of this and how we can most easily proceed? > Clearly #3 would work, but it is also the most laborious and difficult. #1 > or #4 would be the easiest practically to do, but I'm unclear on the > legality, or what happens if it is not considered legal, since we aren't > incorporated or localized. If the consequence is just one of opening us (or > me personally?) to a lawsuit, then wouldn't the plaintiff have to show that > they were somehow harmed? > > I can't comment on the legal details, but using existing community processes is always a plus. The closest relicensing project I can recall is Wikitravel's upgrade from BY-SA 1.0 to BY-SA 3.0. The former did not allow adaptations of a work to be released under a later version, so they were stuck at 1.0, without getting agreement, from all contributors in theory, to change to 3.0. If I recall correctly, they took an approach similar to #4, though over a longer time period and with lots of public discussion. I haven't looked in awhile, see http://wikitravel.org/en/License_upgrade Not a lawyer, Mike -- https://creativecommons.net/ml
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