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GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit
Wikipedia is one of the preeminent
examples of what can be done in an open setting; it has, over the years,
accumulated millions of articles - many of them excellent - in a large
number of languages. Wikipedia also has a bit of a licensing problem,
but it would appear that recent events, including the release of a
new license by the Free Software Foundation, offers a way out.
Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The GFDL has been covered here a number of times; it is, to put it mildly, a controversial document. Its anti-DRM provisions are sufficiently broad that, by some peoples' interpretation, a simple "chmod -r" on a GFDL-licensed file is a violation. But the biggest complaint has to do with the GFDL's notion of "invariant sections." These sections must be propagated unchanged with any copy (or derived work) of the original document. The GFDL itself must also be included with any copies. So a one-page excerpt from the GNU Emacs manual, for example, must be accompanied by several dozen pages of material, including the original GNU Manifesto. So the GFDL has come to be seen by many as more of a tool for the propagation of FSF propaganda than a license for truly free documentation. Much of the community avoids this license; some groups, such as the Debian Project, see it as non-free. Many projects which still do use the GFDL make a clear point of avoiding (or disallowing outright) the use of cover texts, invariant sections, and other GFDL features. Some projects have dropped the GFDL; in many cases, they have moved to the Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license which retains the copyleft provisions of the GFDL without most of the unwanted baggage. Members of the Wikipedia project have wanted to move away from the GFDL for some time. They have a problem, though: like the Linux kernel, Wikipedia does not require copyright assignments from its contributors. So any relicensing of Wikipedia content would require the permission of all the contributors. For a project on the scale of Wikipedia, the chances of simply finding all of the contributors - much less getting them to agree on a license change - are about zero. So Wikipedia, it seems, is stuck with its current license. There is one exception, though. The Wikipedia copyright policy, under which contributions are accepted, reads like this:
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts,
and with no Back-Cover Texts.
The presence of the "or any later version" language allows Wikipedia content to be distributed under the terms of later versions of the GFDL with no need to seek permission from individual contributors. Surprisingly, the Wikimedia Foundation has managed to get the Free Software Foundation to cooperate in the use of the "or any later version" permission to carry out an interesting legal hack. On November 3, the FSF and the Wikimedia Foundation jointly announced the release of version 1.3 of the GFDL. This announcement came as a surprise to many, who had no idea that a new GFDL 1.x release was in the works. This update does not address any of the well-known complaints against the GFDL. Instead, it added a new section:
An MMC [Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site] is "eligible for
relicensing" if it is licensed under this License, and if all works
that were first published under this License somewhere other than
this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into
the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were
thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing. In other words, GFDL-licensed sites like Wikipedia have a special, nine-month window in which they can relicense their content to the Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license. This works because (1) moving to version 1.3 of the license is allowed under the "or any later version" terms, and (2) relicensing to CC-BY-SA is allowed by GFDL 1.3. Legal codes, like other kinds of code, have a certain tendency to pick up cruft as they are patched over time. In this case, the FSF has added a special, time-limited hack which lets Wikipedia make a graceful exit from the GFDL license regime. This move is surprising to many, who would not have guessed that the FSF would go for it. Lawrence Lessig, who calls the change "enormously important," expresses it this way:
Richard Stallman deserves enormous credit for enabling this change
to occur. There were some who said RMS would never permit Wikipedia
to be relicensed, as it is one of the crown jewels in his movement
for freedom. And so it is: like the GNU/Linux operation system,
which his movement made possible, Wikipedia was made possible by
the architecture of freedom the FDL enabled. One could well
understand a lesser man finding any number of excuses for blocking
the change.
For whatever reason, Stallman and the FSF chose to go along with this change, though not before adding some safeguards. The November 1 cutoff date (which precedes the GFDL 1.3 announcement) is there to prevent troublemakers from posting FSF manuals to Wikipedia in their entirety, and, thus, relicensing them. Now that Wikipedia has its escape clause, it needs to decide how to respond. The plan would appear to be this:
Later this month, we will post a re-licensing proposal for all
Wikimedia wikis which are currently licensed under the GFDL. It
will be collaboratively developed on meta.wiki and I will announce
it here. This re-licensing proposal will include a simplified
dual-licensing proposition, under which content will continue to be
indefinitely available under GFDL, except for articles which
include CC-BY-SA-only additions from external sources. (The terms
of service, under this proposal, will be modified to require
dual-licensing permission for any new changes.)
This proposal will be followed by a "community-wide referendum," with a majority vote deciding whether the new policy will be adopted or not. Expect some interesting discussions over the next month. This series of events highlights a couple of important points to keep in mind when considering copyright and licensing for a project. There is a certain simplicity and egalitarianism inherent in allowing contributors to retain their copyrights. But it does also limit a project's ability to recover from a suboptimal license choice later on. Licensing inflexibility can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view, but it is certainly something which could be kept in mind. The other thing to be aware of is just how much power the "or any later version" text puts into the hands of the FSF. The license promises that later versions will be "similar in spirit," but the GPLv3 debate made it clear that similarity of spirit is in the eye of the beholder. It is not immediately obvious that allowing text to be relicensed (to a license controlled by a completely different organization) is in the "spirit" of the original GFDL. Your editor suspects that most contributors will be willing to accept this change, but there may be some who feel that their trust was abused. Finally, it's worth noting that "any later version" includes GFDL 2.0. The discussion draft of this major license upgrade has been available for comments for a full two years now. The FSF has not said anything about when it plans to move forward with the new license, but it seems clear that anybody wanting to comment on this draft would be well advised to do so soon. (Log in to post comments)
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 5, 2008 17:55 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] I dunno... It seems that Wikipedia's requesting a new license solely to get them out of a quandary sets a dangerous precedent. I envision all sorts of FLOSS-related license proliferation happening just because some licensing organization uses a pre-built license created by someone else only to discover later that "one size does not fit all" and they would be stuck with their current ill-fitted license for the time being. On the other hand, perhaps this isn't Wikipedia's dilemma--if the GDFL truly is flawed in its verbiage, then I hope that this revision is for the license's sake and not just for Wikipedia. Just a general comment: The "or any later version" clause really opens up a Pandora's Box of relicensing possibilities. Let's hope that the GDFL does not reach E.g. version 1.95 within the next year due to nonstop rewriting of the license simply to appease every last licensing organization's request (Wikipedia's current situation excepted).
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:02 UTC (Wed) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link] Interesting in context of the Openstreetmap licensing problem discussed last week. They are currently CC-BY-SA Version 2.0 and any move to a different license would now be extremely difficult because it would require agreement from all contributors and possibly the removal of some data.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:20 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] I think that the way to resolve these issues is for contributors to assign their work to some body that has the power to change licenses, but that is still accountable to the contributors. For example, contributors to project Foo could give the Foo Foundation authority to relicense, subject to a vote of the Foo Foundation members and with the proviso that any new license must be DFSG-free (for example).
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:26 UTC (Wed) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
One problem with this is that it's actually a very complicated thing to do with copyright laws differing around the world.
I also see a sort of chicken&egg problem, if your Foo project is small then you probably don't have Foo Foundation until it starts growing rapidly, but at that point you already have (hopefully) a lot of material.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:37 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Entities like http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/ can be helpful if you are a small Free software project and would still like to reap the benefits of a foundation without the maintenance overhead.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 7:42 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]
But many people find the difficulty of relicensing to be a feature, not a bug.
If I contribute to a project under the GPL (without "or any later version" clause) such as the Linux kernel, that has hundreds or thousands of different contributors, I can be certain the project will remain under the GPL, simply because it would be practically impossible to relicense.
In contrast, if I contribute to a project where I have to give atleast the right to relicense to a single external entity, I have to completely trust that entity. Not only as it is today, but also any group of people that may in the future get control of that entity. This could in principle include a hostile group getting control of the entity as the result of winning a court-case or whatever. (you lose a case, are unable to pay the damages awarded, and as a result all your assets are sold to the highest bidder, which could mean ANYONE)
I'm not saying it's a very likely scenario, obviously it would depend on which particular foundation gets the control. What I'm saying is it's in a sense safer to have NOBODY be in control, because it means that there is no single target to attack.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 7, 2008 0:13 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] But then there's the risk that the project could be stuck if there's something wrong with the license chosen, or it needs to incorporate some code with a conflicting license.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 20, 2008 19:58 UTC (Thu) by Ronnyice (guest, #55276) [Link]
GFDL 1.3:Wikipedia's exit permit
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 7, 2008 7:38 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
In case of OpenStreetmap this would not work. People would never assign their copyright over to a foundation (apart from the legal difficulties in some parts of the world to do this).
Some do not want to run risk of having their contributed data under a non-sharealike license, they would rather quit and pull our their contributed data. These would never sign over their copyright. Plus it makes the barrier of entry to the project much higher (see the FSF where you have to send faxes to the foundation, granting them copyright etc...)
Debian vs. GFDL Posted Nov 5, 2008 19:12 UTC (Wed) by DeletedUser32991 ((unknown), #32991) [Link]
Actually, Debian has decided to consider GFDL without invariant sections, cover texts etc. to be free quite a while ago.
Debian vs. GFDL Posted Nov 5, 2008 19:55 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Reference please?
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 7:07 UTC (Thu) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
> In other words, GFDL-licensed sites like Wikipedia have a special,
> nine-month window in which they can relicense their content to the > Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license.
I don't get it. You say "in which they can"... but hasn't the relicensing already happened by virtue of the FSF's new wording? I can download all of Wikipedia, put it on my own server, upgrade from GFDL 1.2 to GFDL 1.3 using the "any later version" clause, relicense to CC-BY-SA by this new clause, and viola, all of Wikipedia's content is now CC-BY-SA.
It's still their choice is how to handle future content, but it certainly seems like all existing content has just effectively been relicensed. As long as I do what I said above, within the next 9 months.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 8:09 UTC (Thu) by cworth (subscriber, #27653) [Link]
> I don't get it. You say "in which they can"... but hasn't the
> relicensing already happened by virtue of the FSF's new wording? > I can download all of Wikipedia, put it on my own server, upgrade > from GFDL 1.2 to GFDL 1.3 using the "any later version" clause, > relicense to CC-BY-SA by this new clause, and viola, all of > Wikipedia's content is now CC-BY-SA.
I think the wording in the exit clause prevents this. Specifically, the wikipedia content in this case would be one of a class of "works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC" and then you would run afoul of not having "incorporated [it] prior to November 1, 2008".
-Carl
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 8:18 UTC (Thu) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
Oh, tricky. But any site that did copy Wikipedia before Nov 1 could still do it.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 17:53 UTC (Thu) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]
Only if they were also wikis, as I'm reading it. That means only forks are eligible, not just mirrors. It's very narrow. Although thankfully not as narrow as it could be -- it could have just flat-out said only the Wikimedia Foundation could relicense its wikis, which would be really unfortunate for forks.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 8:19 UTC (Thu) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link]
You're not a Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site Operator, are you?
If not, you may not relicense it.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 20, 2008 20:01 UTC (Thu) by Ronnyice (guest, #55276) [Link]
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 20, 2008 20:02 UTC (Thu) by Ronnyice (guest, #55276) [Link]
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 7:10 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
I think the point about invariant sections is not good if talking about Wikipedia, which has already "GFDL without invariant sections or front/back covers" license.
I think the main reason is that it's rather difficult to use eg. one article of Wikipedia properly, since the whole GFDL text should theoretically be included somewhere too (if it's a printed thing). In the case of a whole book of Wikipedia content that's not a problem, but in case of one article among eg. newspaper it is.
So just that the libre encyclopedia could achieve its goals better (spread information freely in copyleft style), it's useful to have a little less "attribution overhead". FSF perhaps has agreed that GFDL is better for user manuals etc., whole products, instead of snippets of information like articles in Wikipedia.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 9:37 UTC (Thu) by herodiade (subscriber, #52755) [Link]
> and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
So all Wikipedia's content added between now and the relicensing resolution (in one month at best) must definitively remains GFDL-only ?
This clause seems to prevent any effective relicensing (esp. given that almost every important or large article in WP is edited more than once a month).
> content will continue to be indefinitely available under GFDL, except for
Then Wikimedia won't try to use the new GFDL clause as an "exit permit"?!
If I understand what this means, they will only use that move to allow a few articles to be CC-By-SA beside the bulk remaining GFDL? Odd.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 10:05 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
I suspect they'll be tracking closely who edits right now, and in the unlikely event that somebody doesn't want the most recent edits relicensed would just drop back to a suitable version.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 17:56 UTC (Thu) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]
> So all Wikipedia's content added between now and the relicensing resolution (in one month at best) must definitively remains GFDL-only ?
> > This clause seems to prevent any effective relicensing (esp. given that almost every important or large article in WP is edited more than once a month).
That clause only applies to content not originally published on a GFDL wiki. In practice, almost all legitimate new Wikipedia content is original to one Wikipedia or another, and most of the rest is public-domain. The only affected content should be incorporation of other GFDL works, like FOLDOC (unless that was already published on a wiki someplace), which will need to be put on hold until the decision is made one way or another.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 6, 2008 11:37 UTC (Thu) by deleteme (guest, #49633) [Link] This proposal will be followed by a "community-wide referendum," with a majority vote deciding whether the new policy will be adopted or not.Most worried about this, democracy is all good but when you have complete anonymity and only need to edit 500 articles... :-/ I'm not so sure.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 8, 2008 20:34 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Wikipedia was made possible by the architecture of freedom the FDL enabled Does anyone know what this means? Is Lessig saying that Wikipedia is possible because it licenses its material under FDL (GFDL?)? I think Wikipedia would be just fine as public domain. Would there be less material in Wikipedia, or would it be less avaliable to people, if authors had just contributed their words freely?
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 9, 2008 4:48 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
The reciprocative nature of the license is important and has enabled others who consume wikipedia to contribute back their changes to the common pool without taking advantage of the work for their sole benefit.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 10, 2008 7:18 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] The reciprocative nature of the license is important and has enabled others who consume wikipedia to contribute back their changes to the common pool without taking advantage of the work for their sole benefit. I don't see how. I think the contributions to Wikipedia would have been the same if it were in the public domain. In fact, even if the Wikimedia Foundation managed copyright on the whole thing the way Encyclopedia Brittanica does, I'll bet it would still have substantially the same participation.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 10, 2008 7:24 UTC (Mon) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link] I don't see how. I think the contributions to Wikipedia would have been the same if it were in the public domain.
I have to agree with this , I think a lot of the contributors don't think about it. I know I haven't when I've contributed in the past.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 10, 2008 7:59 UTC (Mon) by cantsin (guest, #4420) [Link] An example: Germany's leading news site Spiegel Online once ran a "background article" on Iraq that turned out to be an edited and slightly extended version of the German Wikipedia article on the country, without crediting the source. If Wikipedia's content would be public domain, Spiegel would have got away with it. Thanks to the GFDL-copyleft, the site not only had to publish an excuse and credit the source, but had to put its own article under the GFDL so that Spiegel's improvements of the text could be put back into Wikipedia.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 10, 2008 17:55 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] That's a good example, but it's also crucial to know whether someone actually did copy Spiegel's slight extensions into Wikipedia; if not, the GFDL didn't help Wikipedia at all; it just allowed Wikipedia to be a dog in a manger.Assuming someone did, then it's still just an example of Wikipedia made better by copyleft (as opposed to public domain), and still leaves me very skeptical that Wikipedia is made possible by copyleft. To believe that Wikipedia wouldn't exist, or would have substantially different character, if copyleft licensing didn't exist (which seems to be Lessig's claim), I'd have to believe that huge numbers of people who today contribute to Wikipedia would in the public domain case write for the likes of Spiegel instead. I can see that Spiegel could pay more if it had exclusive use of the work, but I don't see it being enough to have a noticeable effect.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 10, 2008 15:13 UTC (Mon) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
I don't see why the FSF is doing this - why aren't they focusing on getting the FDL 2.0, and more importantly the SFDL (Simpler FDL) done? As far as I can see the SFDL should resolve all of the problems the wikipedia folks have with the current FDL; why add some ugly clause allowing them to change to a CC license when they could just get a license everyone agrees on out the door under the rubric of the FSF?
Or am I misunderstanding something here?
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 13, 2008 15:19 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I'd also like to see progress with the SFDL. I made comments on that draft during the period when the GPLv3 was also being reviewed, and the SFDL seems like a real opportunity to have a simple, rigourous, copyleft licence for all kinds of content, not just documentation.
GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit Posted Nov 13, 2008 16:49 UTC (Thu) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link] As far as I can see the SFDL should resolve all of the problems the wikipedia folks have with the current FDLI did not follow this closely, but my impression (from the GFDL 1.3 release announcement) was that Wikipedia wants to incorporate existing CC-BY-SA-licensed stuff, and GFDL 1.3 was designed to enable this.
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