GFDL 1.3

Alex Hudson home at alexhudson.com
Wed Nov 5 14:46:33 UTC 2008


Simo,

simo wrote:
> The GFDL has always been a controversial license and it was clear very
> soon after Wikimedia adopted it that it's language was not right for
> that content. Most people agree that a CC-BY-SA would have been a more
> appropriate license, so maybe the update *does* reflect what most
> authors thought was the right direction.

Well, that's more speculation - I'm quite happy to believe most / all 
authors think it is the right thing, but who knows?

It's pretty much beside my point, though. It's not so much whether this 
is right or wrong, but whether the *mechanism* is right or wrong. It 
sets a precedent that the FSF feel ok using the "or later" clause to 
re-license other people's work without their permission, and I feel 
that's a dangerous precedent.

I also worry about it making Wikipedia's problem worse with the forking 
issues, but that's really Wikipedia's problem again. And, to be frank, 
this has been their problem all along: they chose the wrong license, and 
now it's being "fixed" with this hack. I appreciate that the FSF is 
trying to help them; I just don't think this is the right way to do it: 
Wikimedia should be cleaning up their own mess.

Cheers,

Alex.



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