RE: Wikipedia: one document or many? was Re: [Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifledistribution of articles

> From: Martin Harper on Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:45 PM
> 
> > At 11:55 AM 11/30/2003 +0000, Martin Harper wrote:
> > >The GFDL requires you to list [the authors] on the "Title Page",
> > >which is defined in section 1:
> > >
> > >The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself,
> > >plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the
> > >material this License requires to appear in the title page. For
works
> > >in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page"
> > >means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's
> > >title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
> >
<snip>
> 
> There is a debate over whether we license Wikipedia under the GFDL as
a
> single document, or as a collection of Documents. In broad terms, the 
> former interpretation is easier for us, while the latter
interpretation is 
> easier for our redistributors. The Cunctator favours the former 
> interpretation, while I favour the latter.

How is the former interpretation harder for redistributors? Us saying
the entire Wikipedia site is one Document doesn't mean that we're
insisting that redistributor's entire websites are one Document.

I guess the difference is that if single pages are "The Document" then
redistribution is covered by 2. VERBATIM COPYING and not 5. MODIFIED
DOCUMENTS.

We have a basic problem, which is that Wikipedia is missing a copyright
notice, which makes it impossible for redistributors to follow the
letter of the GFDL, among other things.

The GFDL is simply not really designed for our website. Hopefully we can
get GNU to redesign a later version that works. 

--tc