Re: wikipedia code copied into source?

[John Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com>]

Hi Alex,

I have emailed the two named accounts, referring them to this thread

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Orokusaki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WalterTross

If they agree to provide a better license, the outstanding issue is
the IP that made a modification for compatibility reasons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luhn_algorithm&action=historysubmit&diff=383426059&oldid=382607308

IMO there is no copyright in that edit, as it merely applies a well
known transform to the code.

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Alex Chiang <achiang@canonical.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Looking for guidance. I'm trying to close ITP #492875; the
> upstream includes a file... this is the entire file:
>
>        http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/740724/
>
> aka, code copied from Wikipedia into a GPL-2+ package (ugh). The
> issue is no copyright notice.
>
> I went through the history of the page (double ugh!) and found
> these edits:
>
> Initial creation:
>        http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luhn_algorithm&action=historysubmit&diff=363597751&oldid=362687349
>
> One modification:
>        http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luhn_algorithm&action=historysubmit&diff=368678397&oldid=363763275
>
> Current embodiment:
>        http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luhn_algorithm&action=historysubmit&diff=383426059&oldid=382607308
>
> Can someone please advise whether it's ok to distribute this file?
>
> Thanks!

-- 
John Vandenberg