Talk:Licensing update/Result

you are stole author rights from 10 % of authors?--Freedomuser 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

I think you misunderstood. We will be dual-licensing (GFDL & CC-BY-SA) the text comparing to current model, which is only GFDL. There is no "stealing" or anything similar involved. OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 06:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Re-users will be required to credit you, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the article you are contributing to, and you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium. No! I don't agree. This is the decisive step to an expropriation of the authors in favour of commercial use without even naming the authors (not even a link to the history ...). It is not even compatible with German author's rights, as author's rights, especially concerning naming of author, cannot be totally suspended. This needs a vote, not the license as such. But in this case, a vote would not change anything because it's simply illegal.--Mautpreller 19:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

No, it's not illegal. Yes, an author can decide whether and how he wishes to be attributed; but this also includes the author's right of explicitly stating that attribution "through a hyperlink or URL to the article" is enough for him, e.g. through a declaration as quoted by you. There is no legal requirement to name me as the author of some given content if I do not wish to be named. It is within my rights, according to German law too, to be content with a hyperlink - or with no attribution whatsoever, if I wish so. Were it differently, there could be e.g. no advertisements without naming all the photographers... Gestumblindi 23:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Well, it's illegal all the same. You can abandon your right to be named. But a general "Term of Service" that urges you to abandon your right to be named is immoral and therefore void.--Mautpreller 07:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers#Attribution, last Q/A. --Baruneju 10:34, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Mautpreller, I think it depends on whether the declaration is seen as a third party's "terms of service" you are urged to agree to, or your own terms of use for people using your content. I think that the latter is the case. Gestumblindi 11:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

@Gestumblindi: The answer is obvious. It's a general TOS text by the Foundation which cannot be changed by the author. Which amounts to: It's a third party who urges the author to agree. @Baruneju: But how do I have to understand the sentence quoted above by me from the proposed TOS? There is a contradiction! Q/A: Will the contributor be asked to renounce their attribution rights while pressing the "submit" button? No. On the other hand: By submitting an edit, you agree to release your contribution under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and the GNU Free Documentation License. Re-users will be required to credit you, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the article you are contributing to, and you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium. --Mautpreller 11:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

That's why I created the "attribution" section of the FAQ (however, not every question I put into was accepted/answered) and why (amongst other things) I voted "no" in the poll. Long discussions were made about how to attribute and to whom (check foundation-l and the faq talk), and how this change (attribution by link) is compatible with GFDL (yes for Erik and many others, like people thinking attribution is just ego, no for others). But WMF have lawyers and we not, so just stick with it or avoid to contribute further. I'm picking the second option. However, I wish the best of luck to every contributor. --Baruneju 12:14, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

So the TOS should be changed. Otherwise, there is an open contradiction.--Mautpreller 12:33, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

It's not terms of service, it's the agreement you licence the content you submit under. "Please note that all contributions to Meta are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Meta:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." I'm sure a modified version of something along these lines will what you will be agreeing to in future. If you don't agree, don't submit. Sean Heron 17:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

This is not the point. Free editing and free use are the very idea of the project. The point is attribution, not free use. Attribution only by link to the article might amount to no attribution. Not even the history is mentioned, let alone the main authors; the only one who will be mentioned is Wikipedia. But not Wikipedia wrote the text and did the pictures. I don't agree that a link to the article is sufficient attribution (and a general clause like "you hereby agree that such credit is sufficient in any medium" is void because it is immoral, "sittenwidrig" in German). --Mautpreller 19:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

That's two seperate points - one that you disagree (from a personal point of view) with the proposed mode of attribution (ie quite indirect attribution - people are pointed to the article, but would from there have to stumble upon the edit history by themselves). On this I have not uttered my opinion.

Your other point is that by German law, publishing something under a licence with the aforementioned terms is illegal (void as immoral). While I'm not a lawyer, I disagree with your statement on that (may I again try to point out that what you are agreeing to here is not a term of service - because which service are you recieving? These are no "Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen" to which your argument might apply). Regards Sean Heron 22:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

But they are. Wikipedia tries to urge authors to renounce any kind of attribution rights in relation to third parties. These are "Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen", making use of a dominant position. While this is not a problem as far as free editing and use are concerned as these condition have been the very core of the project from the beginning, it is definitely a problem as far as attribution is concerned.--88.217.134.166 07:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Having cast my vote, I received a chunk of encrypted text that would allow me to verify that my vote has been correctly taken into account. How do I do that? --X-Man 20:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

The encrypted receipt was in case something went wrong with the voting server, as nothing went wrong it's not needed. --Cool110110 09:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Wrong. It was not only intended for problems, but as a general verification method. (I haven't tried this myself, but this my understanding of the process...) Attached to this email (sent to the License Update Committee's mailing list) is "the official log of the vote". If you download it (it's 20 MB), and decompress it, you should be able to find a copy of the encrypted text that you were given included within it, showing that your vote was included in the tally. Please post with your results if you try this. Thanks! JesseW 17:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Thanks. I decided to exercise my right to verification just to make sure that I have it. I downloaded and unpacked the file and verified that (1) there are indeed 17462 encrypted votes, like the result page says, and (2) my vote appears in the file exactly once. Now shouldn't the link to the official log be posted somewhere on the result page so that others could verify their votes, too? However, this is not really enough. To make sure that each vote has indeed been counted according to the choice the user had made, three files should be published (or one file with labels on each vote), separating the encrypted votes into Yes, No, and No opinion categories. That way, each user will be able to verify that there are indeed as many votes in each category as the result page says, and that his or her vote appears exactly once in the category corresponding to the choice he or she made. --X-Man 22:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Indeed. I think that this is important, as vote verification is currently only by trust. User A1 01:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Where is the party at ?!! Great to hear the Board decided to implement immediately! So - far better use of content from Mid June onwards - and perhaps a look towards a better chance of wikipedia to wikinews text use :D! Sean Heron 22:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Can someone please summarize the change in layman's terms? I understand licensing, but I'm failing to recognize what this change means. That's why I voted "don't care". Bob the Wikipedian 03:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Did you help yourself at the Q&A section? OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 06:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

I'd have opposed. Not that my vote would have mattered, but perhaps I could have made an impact by sharing this. Eh, who am I kidding? Anyway, this stinks. --Leavestock 07:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Trying to read it, I find a lot of weird reasoning, such as referring to Proudhon as the only alternative to copyright, and ideas as "viral". That is Dawkins reasoning and if ideas are viral and contagious, why is his own ideas not? Now Dawkins explain religions as memetic parasites, why then are not GPL and GFDL memetic parasites? The reasoning in that article is flawed. And the opponents of GNU Free Documentation License are generally concerned about technicalities of the license rather than the concept as such, for example the strict regime of listing this-and-that contributor in absurdum. I've experienced such troubles with some militarist GFDL fool administrator in the Swedish wikipedia, where he acted as if I should solve his problem. That site is just extremely-GPL/GFDL biased, without any viable analysis of the practical problems of exercising a rigid and malformed license. rursus 09:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

If the author were GPL-biased, then I assume she would have released under it, instead of to the public domain; but you would have had to try a little harder to read the article in order to spot that. The article is anti-CC, not pro-GPL. She doesn't even present GPL as a lesser evil than CC; rather, she presents CC as a greater evil than GPL, which is a subtle but important distinction. She finds them both evil, but the CC is somewhat less hostile to capitalism, which she is quite hostile to, as am I, which is why I wish I would have gotten a chance to share the article. At any rate, the vote went your way, so I'm not sure why you responded here, unless you really did read it and understand it and found its arguments to be powerful enough that you wanted to scare others away from reading it. --Leavestock 20:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

How the vote went wouldn't have mattered since the choices were "Now" and "(Maybe slightly changed) later". The Board had already decided that the change to CC would happen, question was how and when. --89.246.206.252 12:06, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

I have a few images that I GFDL:ed only. Can I add a CC license or must I "create a new" work having a combined GFDL/CC-BY-SA license? Another thing: I think that attribution clause is nerdy and foolish, can I add a clause that I'm not so vain as to need attribution? rursus 09:40, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

If you don't want attribution, you can use the template {{PD-self}} on Wikimedia Commons. Then anyone is able to use your images without attribution and with no restrictions whatsoever. Gestumblindi 02:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

Public domain is way something different then CC-by-Share-Alike. Please don't pretend otherwise. I think the original question is answered by Ohana. Sean Heron 17:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC) Reply

You can modify your images to incorporate new licenses. I don't think anyone will stop you from adding CC license on top of GFDL. OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 02:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC) Reply