GNU FDL changes

[Florian Weimer]

* Florian Weimer:

> No.  So far, there has only been a statement of intent from the
> Wikimedia Foundation:
>
>   <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update>

Oh well.  Here's a transcript of the Youtube video that is floating
around.

| WALES: Creative Commons has devised a full spectrum of licenses that
| people can use to share their works, and these licenses are ported to
| different jurisdictions around the world, and they're easy for normal
| people to understand.
| 
| Wikipedia, had it been founded after Creative Commons, would have
| certainly been under a Creative Commons license, but it didn't exist
| at the time.  So we started with a license called the "Free
| Documentation License".  It's a good license, but it's very
| complicated and very difficult to use.  So a couple of years ago,
| Larry [Lessig] and I were walking in park [inaudible] and started
| talking about license compatibility, and how important this is, and so
| he and I started a project to try to find a way for Wikipedia, which
| has become by far the largest repository of information in the world,
| and the largest repository [of] freely licensed information that [has
| ever] existed by far, and we said how can we make this compatible with
| [the] Creative Commons movement.
| 
| So we went into a long process of negotiations with the Free Software
| Foundation, many, many different conversations, that's very
| complicated, and what the legal ramnifications [are] in that.  What
| I'm happy to announce tonight, is that just yesterday, the Wikimedia
| Foundation board voted to approve a deal between the Free Software
| Foundation, Creative Commons and Wikimedia, so that we are going to
| change the Free Documentation License in such a way that Wikipedia
| will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution
| Share-Alike license.
| 
| And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook, my 50th
| birthday party, this is the party to celebrate the libration of
| Wikipedia.