Re: can Wikipedia apply "CC-BY-SA-compatible FDL" retroactively?

At 12:52 PM 8/10/2008, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > 1) I thought that the GFDL was already compatible with CC-BY-SA 3.0,
> > since they both required derivative works to be published under the
> > same license.  Is there a specific part where they're incompatible,
> > or is it just a case that there are ambiguities about compatibility,
> > and the FDL will be revised to remove all doubt?
>
>Indeed, they require both require new versions to be under the same
>license as the original, and GFDL isn't the same as CC-BY-SA 3.0, thus
>they are incompatible. In spirit, they're pretty similar, but they
>have to exactly the same license (up to version numbers, at least) for
>them to be interchangeable.

Thanks.  So just to be clear, does that mean it's still technically 
illegal to copy an article from Wikipedia and republish it under 
CC-BY-SA?  But once an FDL version is released that's compatible with 
CC-BY-SA, it'll no longer be illegal?

(So, for people to start copying Wikipedia content to Knol, 
presumably two things would have to happen -- Knol would have to 
allow CC-BY-SA as a publishing option, and FDL would have to be 
revised to be CC-BY-SA-compatible.)

Since it was announced in December 2007 that they planned to make the 
FDL compatible with CC-BY-SA, does that mean they're still working on 
it?  Are their pro bono lawyers just really careful with things like 
this, so they usually take a long time before coming out with a new 
version of FDL that meets a specific goal?

         -Bennett

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