Re: GFDL / CC by-sa compatibility

>
> 2. US Creative Commons licenses does not seem to include a term 
> insuring forward compatibility. That is, if a content is used under 
> CC-by-sa ver.1, then there seems to be no guarantee that the same 
> content could be used under CC-by-sa ver.1.1 or any later version. As 
> you know, there is such a line in GFDL, and it seems that it is a 
> major source of hope for those who think GFDL is not suited or too 
> restrictive for Wikipedia.

This has been brought up several times, and I don't see how it's an 
actual issue.  The GFDL says this:
"If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this 
License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of 
following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or 
of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the 
Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version 
number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not 
as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation."

This is an issue with the license grant, not the license itself.  I 
don't see why you can't do the same with CC-by-sa.  Just put on your 
copyright notice that the permission is granted under CC-by-sa 1.0 or 
any later version.

> 3. I think there is still unclarity (at least to me) what is the unit 
> of "work" or "document" as defined in GFDL. Is it the whole wikipedia 
> written in more than 50 languages? Or is it jsut one artcile? Or 
> individual language-wikipedia? I think there is a merit to take the 
> first and second position (both if possible), but not sure about others.

According to what I've read, the GFDL applies to each article 
individually.  Of course, using section 5, combining documents, you 
could combine all the articles into a single work.  Unfortunately you'd 
have to have a history page containing all the contributors, years of 
contribution, etc, and I don't see anywhere this information is 
available.  And it's not as simple as just saying "2000-2004 Wikipedia  
Contributors" or even to list the entire list of usernames, because much 
of the Wikipedia content is based on other GFDL work from 
non-Wikipedians.  You'd have to somehow extract all that information 
from each of the individual articles and then combine it.  IMHO, the 
GFDL is an inappropriate license for Wikipedia.  It may have been the 
only one available at the time, but it is going to be a hinderance in 
the future, unless the FSF makes some serious changes.

> 4. Some articles have incomplete history, I suppose. Some contents are 
> merged from somewhere else, some contents are split from another page, 
> etc. So getting permissions from all previous contributors could 
> involve a bit of detective work. I guess it is still doable with 
> patience in many cases, though.

Heh, I guess I should have read that before writing my response.

>
>
> Well, what I am doing might be what Japanese call "preaching Buddha," 
> - trying to teach an expert what he already knows. Pardon me in that 
> case.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomos