IFWiki talk:Copyright discussions (2005): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:12, 20 January 2005

What the Portland Pattern Repository has done in this area...

The Portland Pattern Repository was the first ever wiki. They've had their own discussions about copyright and licensing. I hope this doesn't add to confusion, but I thought that looking at similar discussions that have happened before might help somewhat. Or cloud the water. I hate not having MUD access at home... --Jon 12:32, 20 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

nm again

I don't understand your perspective on "viral," Sean. I envision the license I suggest allowing exactly the sorts of use that I described. Dennis would not somehow "infect" his whole course packet if he wants to modify an article from ifwiki and include it; the modified article would be the thing covered under by-sa 2.0. I still see the proposal as a way to grant strictly more rights to people to use ifwiki's content. I don't see it changing anything about editing or updating ifwiki -- it's a license for other people, not for ifwiki. If you submit something to a wiki (or any other site), of course it can be used as part of that site and people can do whatever they do with it usually -- edit and update it, in the case of a wiki. Why else would you have submitted it? There's even an agreement on every submission page to this effect, so there's no question about it.

But I'd suggest we take a step back. At a high level, the options as I see them are:

1. Do not license any of the material on ifwiki; that is, do not make it available to others for publication, modification, etc. This is the current situation, so we can just do nothing if we want to do this case.

2. Make the contents of ifwiki more available by declaring all or part of ifwiki to be available under some license.

I thought everyone would want (2), and I thought CC by-sa 2.0 would be a noncontroversial choice, as it's one of the most liberal 2.0 licenses that imposes the restriction that modifications are also covered by it. (A reasonable restriction, I think.) Also, Dave is the only one would would discuss this with me on ifMUD at first, so since no one else wanted to comment or object online, I went ahead and posted the proposal. Clearly, it is controversial, so I was wrong.

Can someone now suggest an alternative? Either (1), or a different form of (2)? Or some option I'm missing, even though the law of the excluded middle seems to suggest there is nothing else but "no license" and "some license"?

--Nm 15:04, 20 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

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 The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Pattern_Repository Portland Pattern Repository] was the first ever wiki. They've had their own [http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiCopyRights discussions] about copyright and licensing. I hope this doesn't add to confusion, but I thought that looking at similar discussions that have happened before might help somewhat. Or cloud the water. I hate not having MUD access at home... --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 12:32, 20 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)
+== nm again ==
 I don't understand your perspective on "viral," Sean. I envision the license I suggest allowing exactly the sorts of use that I described. Dennis would not somehow "infect" his whole course packet if he wants to modify an article from ifwiki and include it; the modified article would be the thing covered under by-sa 2.0. I still see the proposal as a way to grant strictly more rights to people to use ifwiki's content. I don't see it changing anything about editing or updating ifwiki -- it's a license for ''other people,'' not for ifwiki. If you submit something to a wiki (or any other site), of course it can be used as part of that site and people can do whatever they do with it usually -- edit and update it, in the case of a wiki. Why else would you have submitted it? There's even an agreement on every submission page to this effect, so there's no question about it.