Re: FDL used to stifle distribution of articles

Yes, the GFDL is bad...

Note that section 4B does not apply to verbatim copying (see [[wikipedia:verbatim 
copying]]), so non-modifying redistributors do not need to worry about this.

My working definition of "principal author" for a single article on Wikipedia is "author 
who has made a non-minor edit". The GFDL requires you to list five of the principal 
authors, but does not require you to list the five "most principal" authors. This allows 
redistributors to programatically pick a selection of five of the principal authors of 
any given document, if they choose to interpret Wikipedia as a "collection of 
documents".

My working definition of "principal author" for the whole of Wikipedia is that there is 
no individual principal author, but a very large number of individual non-principal 
authors, which collectively make up the principal author entity of "Wikipedia 
contributors". This allows redistributors to simply credit "Wikipedia contributors" if 
they choose to interpret Wikipedia as a single document.

These working definitions seem within the spirit of the GFDL, and allow for 
automated determination of the requirements under section 4B (and 4I, which is 
related). Where I intend to redistribute or fork Wikipedia articles, this is how I intend 
to satisfy the GFDL.

Ulrich is of course free to sue anyone he wants. If so, let's get some Wikimedia 
representation on the case, and see what happens. It'll be nice to get some court 
judgements to place us on firmer legal footing.

-Martin "IANAL" Harper.

On 29 Nov 2003 at 21:10, Erik Moeller wrote:

> A user of the German Wikipedia, Ulrich Fuchs, has threatened to take
> legal  action against any third party who makes commercial use of
> their material  without following a very narrow interpretation of the
> FDL "five author"  requirement, which reads as follows:
> 
> "B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
> entities  responsible for authorship of the modifications in the
> Modified Version,  together with at least five of the principal
> authors of the Document (all  of its principal authors, if it has
> fewer than five), unless they release  you from this requirement."
> 
> Our recommendation for third parties using Wikipedia material so far
> has  been that it is completely sufficient in the spirit of the FDL to
> point to  the original Wikipedia article on which the copy is based,
> because that  page contains the history and therefore the list of
> *all* authors. Ulrich  claims that this is not sufficient because it
> does not meet the conditions  of modification set forth in the FDL.
> 
> This is not just theoretical. There is a new commercial German project
>  called "Flexicon" which uses Wikipedia material. Currently they don't
> give  any credit whatsoever, but since Flexicon itself is a wiki, some
>  Wikipedians have added links to the original Wikipedia articles in
> order  to meet the conditions of the FDL. Ulrich now threatens anyone
> with legal  action who copies material to Flexicon from the German
> Wikipedia which he  has worked on without having the unworkable "list
> of five principal  authors" on the target page.
> 
> This would place an unacceptable burden on third parties as they would
>   have to carry along the complete history of every page thtey use
> (since  there is no automated way to determine who is a principal
> author), a  history which on the English Wikipedia is now so large
> that we can't even  store it in a single file anymore (over 2
> gigabytes). Not to mention that  having such a list in articles is
> cumbersome and annoying.
> 
> In my opinion, legal threats like these are dangerous to this project
> and  to the very idea of open content. They also show once again that
> the FDL  is a fundamentally flawed, overly complex license with lots
> of loopholes  for pedants who want to get their way instead of working
> with the  community.
> 
> There may be a solution to prevent this problem from escalating. We
> could  amend the edit notice on Wikipedia to require the author to
> release third  parties from the need to maintain a list of five
> "principal authors" per  page, since such a release is explicitly
> provided for in the FDL..
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Erik
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