(Moved from Village Pump and Appropedia:Licensing)

I want to add material from another site[1] which is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. Before I copy, though, I'd like to see a clearer licence notice put on Appropedia pages. I notice that Project:Copyrights is currently a redlink.

This may seem anal retentive, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind us using it, but I want to do the right thing by that site's contributors, especially since I'm hoping that they'll come over here to be part of an active wiki. --Singkong2005 t - c 01:21, 17 July 2006 (PDT)

This does not seem anal rententive. Sorry for the slow, inconclusive response, and thank you for putting pressure on this needed component. I have been reticent on this part because I have questions/concerns. The vast majority of the media on appropedia is user created. I do not think that the majority of this content is appropriate for commercial use. What do you think about something like Creative Commons (example license link). As for the text content of appropedia, I am still researching the GNU-FDL. Currently, I am a little put off by some parts, and very excited about other parts, and either way I have benefited much from other GNU works. I think that, for appropedia, encouraging users to submit and assuring free access are paramount. Anybody have any swaying comments or brilliant suggestions? --Lonny 19:05, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
Some quick thoughts...
Re the GNU-FDL:
  • It does allow commercial use, but I'm not sure if that's a problem. Commercial use isn't necessarily a bad thing - the sort of commercial use that this material might be put to probably isn't going to be a "bad" kind of commercialism.
  • I think the licence does prohibit the material being used with a more restrictive licence (e.g. a book with a conventional copyright applying to material taken from Appropedia), so I would think that's the most important thing.
Re the Creative Commons license:
  • It's very simple and elegant. Don't know if it's too simple, though - all that text in the other licenses might be excess verbage, or then again it might actually serve a purpose.
  • The example given specifies non-commercial. Using this particular form of CC licence might mean that we're not entitled to incorporate material that's licensed under GNU-FDL (as Creative Commons is a more restrictive licence). We could still use information from elsewhere, but would have to rewrite it... which we'd probably do anyway. I might be wrong about all that, though.
GNU-FDL seems the simplest route to me - I'm happy to use something which has been decided upon by other communities such as Wikipedia. (Though I'm not sure if the community decided on it, or the foundation, or if it's a historical thing from the people who first started it.)
Those are my thoughts - I'm probably not going to think much more deeply than that about these issues (my eyes glaze over when I see pages of licence-related text) and at this point I don't see a major problem with either option.
--Singkong2005 t - c 02:22, 27 July 2006 (PDT)
Gosh, why wouldn't we (um, hi, I'm Curt) choose the Creative Commons Developing Nations license? Seems like appropriate technology for this wiki.--Curtbeckmann 07:40, 11 September 2006 (PDT)
What an excellent solution (hi Curt). The CCDN license is the best fit that I have seen so far. Do you know if this license allows for material from Appropedia (under the CCDN license) to be used in other wikis? This is something that I think we want. --Lonny 01:53, 12 September 2006 (PDT)
As far as I can tell, other wikis would need to mark any copied content as being under the CCDN license. That seems unlikely, and so it might discourage the dissemination of Appropedia content to other sites. Actually, I had initially interpreted the CCDN as being less restrictive than GNU-FDL, but on further reading I believe it is actually more restrictive. At this point, my preference would be to use whatever license is most often used in other wikis, to simplify the propagation question. I am therefore inclined to go with GNU-FDL. --Curtbeckmann 07:02, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Can we "pull the trigger" on the GNU-FDL? It occurs to me that I'd like this settled as I start recruiting. Thanks... --Curtbeckmann 09:14, 29 September 2006 (PDT)
I agree on this - I have similar concerns about the CCDN license, though I haven't looked into it to see how it would actually work. Lonny, what do you think? --Singkong2005 talk 02:29, 30 September 2006 (PDT)
Thank you all for pushing on this important part of Appropedia. I still have concerns that a license that allows developed-world commercial use will discourage some types of submissions. For instance, some of the non-text content at Electricity_basics. With the GNU-FDL license, if someone used some appropedia-based content commercially, would all of the work it is published with need to be GNU-FDL, or just the content they copied from here? I have a few more questions, but let's settle on this by Tuesday, October 2nd. I would like to talk to a lawyer, but currently I am leaning towards the CCDN. --Lonny 03:29, 1 October 2006 (PDT)
Interesting. I would actually have problems with a license that did not allow developed-world commercial use (which is why I lost some interest in the CCDN license). If someone can find a way to produce these ideas and make a nickel while they're at it, I'm ecstatic. (A lot of appropriate technology could well be useful in the developed world, but won't be adopted if it's only available to DIY types.) Such production could not be proprietary (i.e. patented) under GNU-FDL. I particularly like GNU-FDL because it makes it easy to move information from most existing wikis to Appropedia, and then mature (becoming encyclopedic) content on to Wikipedia. I'm happy with your timeline! Lack of license is more of an impediment than no license. In the absence of a license, I believe that someone can include content from this site into a book, then copyright the book and later claim copyright violation if the content is reproduced! This could probably be fought, but GNU-FDL would explicitly prevent it.
Looking forward to Tuesday! --Curtbeckmann 17:08, 1 October 2006 (PDT)
With trepidation and excitement Appropedia will be adopting the GNU-FDL for our pages. Other licenses may still be looked at for other media content. These changes will be reflected on the pages and Project:Copyrights soon. Thank you Singkong2005 and Curtbeckmann for all of your pressure. --Lonny 13:52, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
Yeah! A little trepidation is okay, I think :-). Now I'll go tidy up the copyright section of the test main page :-) Thanks, Lonny! It actually makes me feel better that you've given it thorough consideration! --Curtbeckmann 13:57, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
Amazingly, Lonny and I actually spoke by phone last night! Wow, what'll they think of next? One upshot of the conversation was that I finally understood Lonny's concerns about the GNU-FDL, which I will attempt to express here. Above he mentions the concern that allowing 1st world commercialization may discourage contributions. I mistook that to mean that potential contributors might be opposed to commercialization in the 1st world. As I now understand his concern, it is that there may be potential contributors who want to reserve their rights to exclusive 1st world commercialization, which is quite different. After thinking about it, I think that Lonny has a point. I've dropped a note to a lawyer friend who may have some insight. We'll see.
Before we hear back from the lawyer, I'll list some other thoughts. Lonny and I spoke briefly about options. Here are some:
  1. Support more than one license. A default license, plus another that would be called out page by page.
  2. Use a links to refer to content on other sites released under licenses than the Appropedia scheme
  3. Create and maintain a separate site for that other content
After sleeping on it, I believe there would be problems with "anyone can edit" coexisting with any form of reserved rights. I would guess that you won't see CCDN licenses on open wikis. Anyone can come in, remove the copyright or change the content, etc. I also think that having a complex copyright scheme will discourage some folks just by confusing them. So I think that the first option (multiple licenses) probably doesn't work. I think the other 2 options are perfectly viable, and consequently I think we should move forward with the GNU-FDL as announced above. Sorry for the shaggy dog story, but wanted to get others "in the know." --Curtbeckmann 07:58, 7 October 2006 (PDT)
The GNU-FDL has finally been accepted and added (see footer). --Lonny 02:47, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
Curt, I see what you are saying about allowing other copyrights for content. But I still see promise in allowing diverse copyrights for media as opposed to text content. There is some precedent for this, and it seems to avoid your concern. --Lonny 02:47, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
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