[arch-women] Fwd: Re: ArchWiki: GNU Documentation License

[Alad Wenter]

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 at gmail.com>
Ontvanger: Alad Wenter <alad at 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