Re: Debian Wiki: License & Helping with transition

[Franklin PIAT <fpiat@bigfoot.com>]

Hello Daniel,

On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 00:08 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> Is there anything a non-DD can do to help get the debian wiki licensing
> mess straightened out?  I'd like to help, but I'm not a DD.

An overview of the situation is available at [1] and [2]. Our plan is
prepare some pages that present the situation ([3], [4]) then ask people
for comments. (on debian-legal, then debian-user and debian-devel)

Contribution/comments/review of the pages [3] and [4] are welcome.

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/385797
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms/Proposals
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms/RelicensingStrategy


> Also, I'd like to point out that this is something that I'm going to
> have to set up a separate wiki because of, because the current wiki
> situation doesn't allow for my use case.
> 

If you write a "standalone" documentation, then it's ok to apply
specific license.

Have a look at :
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Etch/
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReference


> All the stuff I do will of course be DFSG-free, I just want to make
> sure I can incorporate what others do into my own works, assuming them

Incorporating external stuff is another tricky part of [3] (especially
if we choose Public domain or CC0, because importing copyrighted stuff
in a PD work is ... wrong )

> meant for such to happen (which is what is *implied* by a wiki, by
> *not* what is actually legally the case).

Wikipedia have interesting comments on that implied vs legal aspect :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#.28Almost.29_everything_written_down_is_copyrighted


So to make it short : You can create a "book" on our wiki, with a
specific license. Also, you are welcome to review the page [3] and [4].

Regards

Franklin