Any new information available on the possible license switch-er-oo?

Voting finished, now it goes over to the WMF for Jimbo & Godwin to sign off; the changes come in in June.

There hasn't been such excitement since Kim Jong-ill last stood election.

Well, I for one am thrilled. (You can tell just how boring this is by the fact that not one of the usual suspects on Wikipedia is bothering to argue about this.)

I would complain about the disrupted expectations and procedural irregularities involved but the GFDL is so awful that it would be like complaining about Steve McQueen's violating traffic rules while fleeing from the Nazis on his motorcycle in The Great Escape.

Quite. On this one, while there might be issues with the way they're bringing it in, I don't think any sane person would disagree that Jimbo made the right call here. Stopped clock twice a day and all that.

Mr. Wales made the initial bad call. I believe Godwin and other WMF staff cleaned up the mess. I don't see where the guy has anything to do with the matter now other than the usual lip service.

This is just another maneuver to fuck contributors in the ass better, right? So now anyone that takes content from Wikipedia has just got to link "Wikimedia Foundation" instead of listing all the contributors etc. At least, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar...ha_IN_wikipedia Wolfram Alpha seems to be "crediting" contributors this way.

CC by SA has at least as good attribution as GFDL. Under GFDL all that is required is that the "top five" contributors get attribution. CC by SA requires attribution for all contributors. I believe that this might be achieved by a link to the edit history.

Heh heh. In all likelihood, none of the "usual suspects" has actually
read the documents in question carefully.

Personally I would think the CC license is better, simply because the Gnu
license is like everything that Richard Stallman has put his grubby little
hands on......meaning it works, barely.

(It's a Linux joke, you need to talk to someone deep into that scene
for clarity. In spite of all his influence, Stallman is one of the most
despised people in the computer industry.)

That's a patently false lie which was spread by Erik Moeller. Fitting that you would buy into it.



What call?

What is true is that anyone reproducing any material from Wikipedia (or anywhere) under GFDL is obliged to include this text, which makes GFDL unworkable in practice.

"We should switch from GFDL to CC-by-SA". Might not have been his idea, but a proposal this sweeping would have needed his say-so.

I highly doubt it was his idea, and I see no reason to believe it needed his say-so. I'm not even 100% sure if he'll vote for it. A bit of me hopes he'll see how unethical the implementation is, and vote against it.

Is "We should switch from GFDL to CC-by-SA" the right call? I can't see any ethical way to implement it, so I'd say no.



True.



How so? Aside from silly hypotheticals involving coffee cups, I don't see it.

Nice to see you in your officious know-it-all mood.



So like me and The Big E we were hangin' in this euro-trash cafe splitting a pheasant and considering splitting a goat when he hypnotizes me and makes me spread his lies. Don't make me wast my time getting a cite if you can't read the document first.

Your comment was that was *all* that is required. It isn't. I fully agree that you are required to list at least five of the principal authors on the title page.

It is all the attribution required for modifications, that is to say edits. You got something else based on the text?

I don't know what you consider "attribution", but section I says:

This does not refer to "edit histories" accessed by the "history" tab on the Wikimedia Software. It refers to a narrative section in a software manual that would outline the projects history. The only attribution GFDL anticipates is in the Title Page and is this only requires the fab five.

That's quite a unique interpretation you've got there.

As every wikipedia editor is in theory anonymous I really can't see what the fuss is about attribution.

Interesting theory. What does it mean to be "in theory anonymous"?

I used the word "theory" rather informally there, I agree. I meant in principle anonymous.

Attribution is the only significant right contributors to open source projects can hope for. It is also a reasonable expectation for participants in any remotely academic endeavor. It might be seen to be of value to anyone contributing under their real name, of which there are many. It also might be seen to be of value by those contributing under stable pseudonyms (eg user names.) CC by SA is a better vehicle for assuring attribution than the tour-thru-the-untidy-mind-of-Stallman that is GFDL.

What's silly about coffee cups?

I still don't understand. By "in principle anonymous" you mean that it is possible for them to be anonymous? That's true, but then, it's always true.

Some contributors to Wikipedia are anonymous. Some aren't.



It's funny how you capitalized that.

Perhaps we need an interpreter? Believe it or not my real name isn't Malleus, for instance, but there are many wikipedians who do know my real name. So am I anonymous or not?

You're pseudonymous. But that's beside the point. Some people use their real names on Wikipedia.