IFWiki:Copyright discussions (2005)

This page relates to discussions which were held in 2005. Its original name was "Founding Agreement". Please do not edit this page - instead go to IFWiki:Copyright discussions.

Overview

We are in the midst of a licensing discussion for ifwiki. There are two proposals so far, some reference material, and some heated discussion. For background, here is a summary of events:

David Cornelson purchased the domain ifwiki.org, installed MediaWiki software, and setup ifwiki on a server in his basement. The database for ifwiki can be mirrored by anyone wishing to do so. See MediaWiki for notes on hardware/software requirements.
David Cornelson asked Dennis Jerz for permission to load the IF Theory Glossary into ifwiki. Dennis leapt at the opportunity to revitalize the community-built glossary. David Welbourn began to help out and in fact completed the task almost entirely on his own.
David Cornelson also received permission from Gunther Schmidl to move the Speed-IF index from fourcoffees.com to ifwiki. He started this process and then David Welbourn completed it.
David Welbourn began to add indexes for certain IF people and game lists.
Nick Montfort added an FAQ for IF and invited others to share in the writing.
David Cornelson added IF related indexes and asked others to share in the writing.
Nick Montfort began talking about copyright and licensing issues. He proposed the Creative Commons license.
David Welbourn had a negative reaction to the licensing proposal and eventually dissented.
Others weighed in with their opinions.
Nick Montfort garnered approval from all FAQ writers to implement the Creative Commons license for the FAQ separate from ifwiki licensing.
David Cornelson proposed a Public Domain license with the ability to create copyrighted articles.
Nick and Dave discuss Dave's proposal on ifMUD

Proposals

CC by-sa 2.0 Proposal

I propose that we license all of the ifwiki material under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. This license allows republication of material by anyone, as long as they (1) attribute the article to ifwiki, including the URL of the original text, (2) make derivative works available under the same license, and (3) let others know about the license, which can be done by just including a link to it and a short note.

(The license also requires that the original author be credited. I suggest we understand this to mean that if any ifwiki articles have bylines naming one or more authors, those authors must be credited as a condition of the license. If they do not, it is sufficient to credit ifwiki and link to the article on ifwiki. In cases where there is no byline, the revision history for articles will still make everyone's contributions apparent, but we do not intend to legally require that anyone be credited individually for articles without a byline.)

I propose we change the submission forms so that letting ifwiki license your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license will be a condition of submitting text or uploading files.

If this sounds good to you, and you are one of the people who have already contributed to ifwiki, please sign the Founding Agreement by logging on and adding the text "I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license" to the agreement, along with your name.

If we all agree to this license, and then have all existing contributors sign, we can go ahead and add a Creative Commons notice to every page of the site.

--Nm 18:42, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time) --David Cornelson 21:13, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Public Domain 1 Proposal

After careful thought, here is my proposal:

All generally shared content on ifwiki is defaulted to Public Domain unless:

Upon creation of an Article, the author specifies a copyright, which may be one of:
1. Collective Work using any license the original author decides to implement.
2. Byline, which gives the original author copyright to all content, including edits made by other individuals.

Copyrighted articles may reference other portions of ifwiki freely, but ifwiki must attribute copyright works appropriately.

If people felt it necessary, we could modify the new page form so that a second text box allows the original author the ability to enter their specific copyright or license clause. If this option is taken, only the original author would be allowed to modify this clause. The article itself would remain editable by the public.

In the case of a Collective Work, the maintenance of attribution would be the responsibility of the author or editors, not ifwiki.

So the result of this would be that the Glossary and Speed-IF pages would become public domain. The FAQ would have a Creative Commons license, and I would have to determine whatever copyright or license I want on the few articles I have started. After that, the Public Domain default would be placed into the new page form along with the option of creating a Collective Work or Byline copyrighted article.

Comments?

[The proposal above was written by David Cornelson 16:45 21 January 2005.]

Issues

Are the original IF Theory Glossary items copyrighted?
1. If yes, then how do we attribute and license them?
2. If no, what license will they have?
What kinds of content will we have that might have conflicting or varied licenses?
1. Glossary Items
2. Shared Articles without a main author
3. Articles with a byline and editors
4. References to external databases such as Baf's
How are anonymous authors or editors attributed?

Creative Commons Agreements

I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. --Nm 18:32, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions of the FAQ Article under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. All other contributions are in reserve until further notice. --David Cornelson 14:18, 23 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license, and monkeys are hereby declared funny, and ever henceforth shall it be. -- Maga 09:35, 16 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. --inky 15:58, 17 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I agree to let ifwiki license my existing contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Such as they are. I'm pretty damn lazy. --Jon 16:32, 19 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I agree with CC licenses, and feel that the fears stated are due to misinterpretation (but, seriously, who am I?). I use CC at my own "interactive" fiction wiki. --Morbus Iff 08:44, 28 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

If it's still relevant, I do agree to CC-BY relicensing. (We probably need a new wiki at this point though.) Oreolek (talk) 06:54, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Testing License Tab

Logged Out:

Anyone should be able to view a license that exists for an article.
If no license exists for an article, the tab is not shown.
If the user tries to cheat and enter License:articlename, they will be given the uneditable version of a blank article.

Logged In and original author of an article:

Will see license tab at all times and can edit license anytime.

Logged In and not original author of an article:

If a license exists, the tab is shown.
If the user jumps to the license page, they will not be able to edit it.
If no license exists for an article, the tab is not shown.
If the user tries to cheat and enter License:articlename, they will be given the uneditable version of a blank article.

For Articles:

The associated license should be shown (not editable) at the bottom of an article. If no such license has been created, the phrase "This article is public domain." is printed. (up for discussion).

References

Discussion