discuss: Re: licence problems / wiki pages footer
Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems / wiki pages footer
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
3 Oct 2008 20:50:11 +0100
Message-Id: <20081003195007.GA1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> just a note: we don't use mediawiki but MoinMoin wiki.
I see that well indeed (still) are. My mistake.
Did iBiblio migrate the wiki from one machine to another, at some point
in the last few months? The reason I ask is that Robert Spencer and I
both did quite a bit of wiki editing, early on, and then my family went
to Europe for a few weeks, and when I came back the wiki looked quite
different and I _thought_ I could no longer find my and Robert's earlier
work in the site changes history. (I could be wrong.)
That plus some comments I saw on this mailing list mislead me into
thinking that there must have been a migration from Moin to Mediawiki
during my absence. (I'm familiar with Moin, and was well aware that we
were using it during the early period.)
> > there's a footer down at the bottom of the edit page. We can and should
> > decide what _that_ footer says.
>
> very good idea. Is it possible to have just a link to a wiki page?
Dunno. One would have to experiment.
However, I'm undecided on whether an edit-buffer page should have
crucial information offered only via a hyperlink to a separate page
elsewhere. Maybe there can be a super-terse line or two, displayed
right next to the Save Changes and Preview buttons, by which the
contributor can assent to the document's licence -- or, if the document
doesn't have one inline, to what's on LdpWikiDefaultLicence .
In Moin, those buttons are actually near the _top_ of the edit buffer,
not the bottom. (My mistake.) So, maybe I meant header rather than
footer. Anyway, what I really mean is: Something that's part of the
edit-buffer boilerplate page text, adjacent to the Save Changes and
Preview buttons.
What I'm mainly thinking about, above is: The less LDP is obliged to
rely on implicit licensing, the better. Some would say that (for
example) a contributor uploading a new HOWTO to a wiki that has a
site-wide policy of "GFDL 1.2 or later with no invariant sections, no
front-cover matter, and no back-cover matter" implicitly licenses
his/her contribution that way. That might be true -- but it's much less
certain than if there was some overt action (some word or deed) by the
contributor that explicitly indicated that act of licensing. Similarly,
some would say that anyone editing a copy of the Linux User Group HOWTO
is implicitly assenting to CC BY-SA 3.0 or later terms. That also might
be true, but it's much more definite with some overt act/statement of
agreement.
Essentially, you imagine an LDP staffer in front of a judge. The judge
says "Contributor Zachariah here claims he never assented to BY-SA
licensing." Do we (or the HOWTO maintainer) have a good response to the
judge? I'm honestly uncertain how best to arrange this -- I'm still
thinking through the problem as I write this (and am being distracted by
other work, too), but I'm envisioning a terse reminder that the user
should see the doc for licensing terms and by hitting "Save Changes" is
assenting to those terms if present, that LdpWikiDefaultLicence
is urged for new docs, and that new docs may be declined if not
reasonably licensed.
The "by hitting Save Changes you are assenting" makes the act of
licensing explicit rather than implicit, clearer to everyone, and more
defensible in the case of dispute (legal or otherwise).
> I add this:
> "XXXX HOWTO, copyright (c) john Doe 2009"
> on the HOTOTemplate
It's not that important, but the standard order for that data is
Copyright (c) [year], [owner name]
See for example http://lwn.net/ .
