Re: Re: [Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifle distribution of articles

On 30 Nov 2003 at 13:45, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> How about using both interpretations together? There are many
> open-source projects that are dual-licenced, perhaps we could release
> the whole entire Wikipedia under a single GFDL with a single set of
> principal authors on its title page and then in addition to that
> release each individual article under its own GFDL with its own list
> of five principal authors determined by some algorithm. That way
> people could pick whichever approach to re-using Wikipedia content
> that was most convenient. It could even offer a little incentive for
> people to put their entire site under the GFDL, without forcing them
> to if they really don't want to.
> 
> IANAL either, just kicking around ideas.

I would also support that approach. However, note that this requires us to do a little 
extra work in GFDL compliance: IE, we would have to give a list of "principal 
authors" on the main page, and also on any individual article where we've imported 
text from a GFDL'd third party (such as Nupedia, FOLDOC, etc). I think this minimal 
amount of extra work would be worth it.

To make this dual licensing official, we would need to change our license from "all 
text is licensed under the GFDL..." to "The English Wikipedia, as a whole, is licensed 
under the GFDL.... All Wikipedia articles are licensed under the GFDL...". To make 
one or the other single license options official, we'd need to do something similar but 
with only one of these clauses.

-Martin "IANAL" Harper