Comments for Wikipedians to Vote on Site-Wide Creative Commons

Wikipedians to Vote on Site-Wide Creative Commons

2009-04-13T22:38:49Z

The Creative Commons Blog today announced that the Wikipedia community is holding a vote to move to using Creative Commons for its primary content license. The license being discussed is CC BY-SA or Attribution-ShareAlike. Although Wikipedia is already covered by the Gnu Free Documentation License (or GFDL), which is similar (and was the best available choice at the time Wikipedia got started), it contains some 'potentially onerous provisions' according to the Wikimedia Licensing Update page.

]]> The process to get to the Creative Commons license would start by dual-licensing existing content, and then allowing new third-party content created for Wikipedia to come in just under the CC BY-SA license. This will ensure that any content shared from Wikipedia in the future can be done under the now broadly-used terms of Creative Commons licensing and without the additional restrictions required by the GFDL, which was created more for application code documentation and is slightly more stringent, for example requiring anyone using the content to include the full license code with each use.

The Wikipedia licensing Questions and Answers page contains a quote from Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales which sums up the necessity of the change:

"When I started Wikipedia, Creative Commons did not exist. The Free Documentation License was the first license that demonstrated well how the principles of the free software movement could be applied to other kinds of works. However, it is designed for a specific category of works: software documentation. The CC-BY-SA license is a more generic license that meets the needs of Wikipedia today, and I'm very grateful that the FSF has allowed this change to happen. Switching to CC-BY-SA will also allow content from our projects to be freely mixed with CC-BY-SA content. It's a critically necessary change for the future of Wikimedia."

Some parts of Wikipedia are already using the Creative Commons license, like many of the images that are uploaded by contributors. However, even with Wikimedia Commons, the default is GFDL.

The voting is ongoing and eligibility to vote is extended to all users who have made at least 25 edits to any Wikimedia project before March 15, 2009. Voting ends on May 3, 2009. Instructions are on the licensing page and are fairly simple; they say to "Visit the page called Special:SecurePoll/vote/1 on a wiki for which you meet the voting conditions."

Image courtesy of the Creative Commons blog.

Comment from Steven Walling on 2009-04-13

2009-04-13T23:50:39Z

The GFDL isn't "slightly more stringent". It's a a complete and utter mess for Wikipedia.

Since it was designed for software documentation with only a few authors, it specifies that all the significant contributors have to be credited. For a Wikipedia article with potential thousands of authors, this effectively prevents people from republishing any of our content in print form or with proper attribution, which is contrary to the purpose of having a free license in the first place.

Since the eligibility to vote is only 25 edits before the 15th of last month, I highly encourage everyone interested in free culture to participate, even if you don't consider yourself a Wikipedian.

Comment from Phil Glockner on 2009-04-13

2009-04-14T01:42:04Z

Thanks for the clarification on the GFDL, Steven. If it works the way you describe it, it definitely would be a hugely onerous task to cite anything from a Wikipedia article.

Comment from Karl on 2009-04-13

2009-04-14T05:22:37Z

Whatever, I don't believe Wikipedia bullshit anymore. They never respected GFDL in the first place, which bars them from using public domain works, CC-SA works, among many others. Wikipedia only enforces it when they think violating the GFDL might help someone else, but if respecting it means they are at a disadvantage with respect to Citizendium and other sites, then they don't care anymore.

Yes, they should've used CC-SA, but how are they going to relicense previous content that was licensed under GDFL? That means rewriting everything.

Comment from Navneet on 2009-04-14

2009-04-14T08:51:22Z

I guess this should be good

Comment from the718 on 2009-04-14

2009-04-14T16:53:21Z

"The Wikipedia licensing Questions and Answers page contains a quote from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales which sums up the necessity of the change:

"When I started Wikipedia, Creative Commons did not exist."

Jimmy - don't you mean "co-founded?"

Stop lying about Larry's role.

Comment from Gregory Kohs on 2009-04-14

2009-04-14T16:54:57Z

It would be nice if you boobs in the field of journalism could at least get Jimbo's title of "co-founder" correct.

http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/an-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales-copy/

Comment from Phil Glockner on 2009-04-14

2009-04-14T17:34:09Z

Since you asked so nicely, Gregory, I'll update the post.

Comment from Six Degrees of Chris C on 2009-04-14

2009-04-14T17:41:03Z

I sure hope that enough people vote for switching to CC-BY-SA.