Re: wiki license (www license...)
Hi,
On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 12:23 -0500, Lukasz Szybalski wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 7:37 PM, Franklin PIAT <fpiat@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> > I have read your blog about the wiki[1] with interest, and I have some
> > comments and questions.
> >
> > Joey Hess wrote:
> >> I doubt that trying to get the whole wiki licensed under a specific
> >> license is a good use of time.
> >
> > My intend is to have a default license, and to get it applied to
> > existing content that have unclear license.
> > BTW, I don't think we should have a single license for the wiki : some
> > specific pages, like DebianReferences, could have a specific license.
> >
> > Can you clarify "good use of time" ?
> >
> >
> >> Since the wiki is not a package that we ship, but is instead a ad-hoc
> >> collection of many documents, and many conversations, I also don't see
> >> the point of a single consistent license, or any reason to be bothered
> >> by content whose license is not specified.
> >
> > Actually, I have on my plan to create a debian package with a (partial)
> > copy of the wiki, so offline users can access read it on the CD.
>
> This could be done with a printing option and have the file as html
> http://wiki.debian.org/SystemPrinting?action=print
> Is there a specific section you would want to get off line? Filetype?
There are multiple technical options for that. DebianReferences and
DebianEdu exports files as docbook. Moinmoin also has an option to
export the actual content as html fragment.
But my point was actually to state that the wiki needs to be under a
license that allows such use.
> > Also, I consider that the content of most pages should be moved to
> > official documentations regularly (package documentation, README.Debian,
> > www.debian.org.etc...).
>
> How would this work?
That has to be defined (both the workflow and tools).
But the general idea is that many wiki page provide some information
that are missing in the documentation. That information should be
moved/merged in official documentation at some point (typically, by the
next stable release).
Currently, this can be done "manually" by the package maintainer.
> > Finally I wish it were possible to share|fork|patch documentations,
> > including wiki pages, among distributions, with something like git+wml
> > (I'll post about this soon).
> >
> >> Be very wary of anything that makes contributing to the wiki require
> >> jumping through more legal hoops than it takes to contribute to
> >> lists.debian.org or bugs.debian.org. Chilling effects can work both
> >> ways.
> >
> > I don't understand the point here, the wiki already has a license[2] (or
> > it could be considered "public domain" due to the
> > missing /copyright.html).
>
> public domain is not a license in its own. It describes the situation
> of "federal employees only" .
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225
>
> But you could probobly assume that if somebody contributed on debian
> wiki they have contributed according to debian licensing requirements
> even do they were missing.
"assume"... I'm not sure legal people use that word ;)
I suppose that the actual copyright/license depends on the date when the
contribution was made, when the user account was created, and whether
the /copyright.html file existed at that time... Anyway, we will
probably need to relicense all the pages and ask for advice on
debian-legal.
> You could post a little description saying to remove the content if it
> is otherwise.
I hope we can have such a strategy, but I'm prepared for the worth.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms/RelicensingStrategy
> >
> > Also, If someone don't want to contribute some code or some
> > documentation because of the license, then fine he shouldn't ! (Yes,
> > Debian has high standards, that's why I chose it).
>
>
> >
> > If one wonders why I chose to add "www license" to the subject of this
> > mail, it's simply because the website has the same "problem".
> >
> > Franklin
> >
> >
> > [1] http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/All_Seated_on_the_Ground/
>
> Maybe doing something like this?
> "I think wiki should have default license which gets applied if there
> isn't one specified. I also think contributor could apply a license if
> he wanted to if its in this list (gpl. bsd, abc,bcd...only )"
Actually, that's not "if the contributor want to", but if the type of
document requires it. To put it another way, If each contributor put
it's contribution in different license, we can't merge or reuse the
content.
>
> > [2] http://web.archive.org/web/200504/wiki.debian.net/copyright.html
> He owns a server but the license to the content is anything you want?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean... but that license doesn't
looks like DFSG to me, and some of our content is under that license.
Regards,
Franklin
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