Hi,

I couldn't attend the May meeting due to irregular college hours, but
I've read the logs and saw the possible license of classrooms was
discussed. I'm attaching a mail from Kynikos confirming how projects
collaborating with ArchWiki should indeed keep the same license (as the
GNU Documentation License 1.3 describes).

The GDL isn't flawless, but it's well established and I think the
required logging of changes and attribution of content speak for itself.
"Invariant sections" can be added on-demand, but are by no means
mandatory. [1]

I also believe Kynikos makes a fair point on how both wiki and classroom
projects could share efforts (and he did show his enthusiasm towards
Classroom in a later email). Particularly in cases when time is too
short to prepare a full class, and to reach more people interested in
Arch Linux topics.

Regards,

Alad

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Conditions

-------- Oorspronkelijke bericht --------
Onderwerp: Re: ArchWiki: GNU Documentation License
Datum: 2015-05-04 12:16
Afzender: Dario Giovannetti <dariogiova@gmail.com>
Ontvanger: Alad Wenter <alad@archlinux.info>

On 04/05/15 17:31, Alad Wenter wrote:
> Hi Dario,
>
> In the last ArchWomen meeting [1] the license choice for Arch Classroom
> [2] was discussed. The GNU Documentation License is an obvious
> possibility, as this is the license that ArchWiki uses.
>
> A question that arised is why precisily ArchWiki uses this license.
> ArchWiki:General disclaimer [3] links to the license, but otherwise all
> I've found is an explanation in the german ArchWiki [4]. Could you
> clarify on the matter?
>
> Regards,
>
> Alad
>
> [1] https://archwomen.org/media/meeting-logs/2015-05-03LOG.txt
> [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_classroom
> [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchWiki:General_disclaimer
> [4]
> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.archlinux.de%2Ftitle%2Fwiki.archlinux.de%3AUrheberrecht&edit-text=

Um... I'll start saying I've always hated all this legal stuff :P When I
joined the ArchWiki, it was already under the GFDL, and according to the
small research that I published in [1], it has always been since its
creation, in fact creating [2] has been the absolutely first edit of
all.

I don't know "why" that license was chosen over others, but relicensing
everything doesn't sound anything feasible to me, so if Arch Classroom
has to be hosted in the wiki, it has to bear the same license full stop.
In theory a fully compatible license could be used too, but the license
statement in the footer of the articles would stay as GFDL, so this
doesn't seem a viable option either.

Besides, if the Arch Classroom is hosted in the wiki, it's part of it as
a subproject, and cannot be considered as a separate project, so it must
abide to all the wiki regulations, in addition to the license. I'm
referring in particular to duplication of content, which is something
that the classroom articles generated copiously in the past and that the
wiki staff had to fix, still with some remainders, e.g. [3]. If some
wiki articles are not clear, effort should be spent in improving them,
not in creating "better" alternative articles.

Coming back to the license, it's not very clear to me what's your degree
of involvement with the Classroom project, but are you aware of a
particular reason why the use of GFDL is questioned? If not, we could
all just keep it simple and use our energies to contribute content to
the wiki as we've always done, regardless of the license ;)

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchWiki:About#History
[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchWiki:General_disclaimer
[3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_-_An_Introduction

Dario