GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:02 UTC (Wed) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770)
Parent article: GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

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.

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GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

Posted Nov 5, 2008 18:20 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (8 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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] (4 responses)

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] (2 responses)

GFDL 1.3:Wikipedia's exit permit

GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

Posted Nov 20, 2008 20:08 UTC (Thu) by Ronnyice (guest, #55276) [Link] (1 responses)

GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

Posted Nov 20, 2008 20:08 UTC (Thu) by Ronnyice (guest, #55276) [Link]

GFDL 1.3: Wikipedia's exit permit

Posted Nov 7, 2008 7:38 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #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...)