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Re: Wiki Usage

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John Belmonte wrote:

Glenn Maynard wrote:

[snip]
I do think there's a real problem in having a wiki that doesn't deal
with licensing at all: it encourages people to write useful code and
release it without licensing it. (Most people, I think, don't care,
and just follow the rules of wherever they're posting.) People think
they're contributing code that anyone can use, but they're not.
There's got to be a way to improve on that.

For anyone so concerned about reuse (and perhaps attribution) of their
work, especially for significant pieces of code, the wiki is not the
place to house the authoritative copy. Publish your work and license
statement from a location which (ideally) only you have write access to.
[snip]
Code licensing is not an issue. Authors of significant pieces of work are usually bright enough to identify themselves, thus whatever licensing required for some commercial contract can be conducted by the two parties. It is then their duty to assess the risk. The wiki can disclaim everything. Snippets are not copyrightable if they involve standard ways of doing things, unless the algorithm used is patented. Most snippets merely serve to save the reader time and effort, that is, someone has already blazed the way. That's where the value of the wiki lies. No sane person will go through the trouble of taking legal action over a snippet; a judge will think you're crazy. Snippets accompanied by a discussion on a wiki page is a really good way of presenting things, so I doubt the GForge feature, if enabled, will be heavily used. The original issue was about the end-users of wiki material, not the authors. It is just that some proposals involved changes in the way people contribute or in the policies. Author attribution is merely an example of good manners, it doesn't imply that authors are desperate about strictly licensing bits of stuff. The issue was really due to the value of aggregated text and snippets. A wiki pools resources and aggregates material. A single person can't create much value given the little time the person has, but with lots of people... There is significant value in such aggregations of text and snippets. At the moment, there is no way for anyone to make use of such aggregations verbatim without risk or barriers. For some people, the risk might be acceptable. Sensible solutions include adapting the material or contacting reputable contributors for permission. That is a barrier -- it takes effort. 
(By the way, from various things you've said, it almost sounds as if the
wiki has the opposite--a policy forbidding licensing code on it. Just
to be clear, that's not the case, right?)

I'm opposed to assertions of copyright on the wiki, since on a medium
that is world-writable and doesn't identify users, there is no
accountability for the person making the claim nor control of subsequent
(perhaps malicious) modifications to the claim or the work.
Since taking up any risk of liability by declaring some kind of copyright policy is not an option, the wiki ought to have a page explaining all this to the visitor. Oh, a final idea: What if the wiki is declared a public domain area, but with big disclaimers for people wishing to utilize the material verbatim in commercial products? The wiki was, after all, likened to a wall of graffiti... 
--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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