GFDL 1.3

[simo]

On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 14:07 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
> Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> > Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> writes:
> >   
> >> In previous drafts I saw, there was an idea of being able to relicense 
> >> to a "GNU Wiki License" which would have presumably been CC-BY-SA 
> >> compatible without needing to relicense to that license[...]
> >>     
> > It's possible that after trying, they decided that licence compatibility was
> > impossible.
> >   
> 
> That seems pretty speculative. To quote Yoda, it's do or do not - there 
> is no "try", just the willingness to make the changes. It seems to me 
> that the only stumbling block is the removal of incompatible 
> restrictions in the FDL.
> 
> > I'm also not sure if licence compatibility can be open-ended.  If the
> > hypothetical GNU Wiki License was compatible with cc-by-sa-3.0, then the
> > window of compatibility would close when cc-by-sa was changed in an
> > incompatible way.
> 
> Even in that scenario, it could be fixed with an updated license invoked 
> via the "or later.." clause, again assuming that the willingness was 
> there (& the change on the other side was something we were happy 
> with).  That's no different a situation to (e.g.) GPLv3 and the Apache 
> v2 licenses.
> 
> I admire your willingness to attempt to hypothesise about reasons this 
> could be a good thing or the only solution, but it still boils down to 
> the fact that "or later.." is being used to relicense works to CC-BY-SA 
> without the original author's permission. "Or later..." is supposed to 
> be used to update licenses to reflect the same spirit but respond to 
> modern needs. Introducing the possibility of an irreconcilable fork 
> doesn't seem to me to be in the same spirit.

Or maybe that's what most authors thought was the right direction.

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.
It's clearly impossible to please everyone, you will always find someone
that claim it's not right, and FSF lost his mind, etc..., but if you
look at things in perspective maybe you will find out that the common
feeling is that this is indeed the right move, and will let people that
mistakenly adopted the GFDL not fully understanding its complexities fix
the licensing and move toward a license that is no less 'free'.

Btw, the FAQ also explains why the dates are chosen that way, it seem a
pretty good explanation.

Simo.