a) Content that has been imported from WP is under GFDL and will ever be exclusievely, because any change of licence would require to contact _all_ contributing WP authors, not the foundation or whomever else.

b) Already now CZ, as many other sites btw., violates the GFDL when displaying WP content by _not_ giving credit to the original authors. Some CZ pages relink to WP (others don’t even do that, like “Astronomy”), but this is not enough. Authors must be listed together _locally_ with the content, or on a subpage of the content. Because of c), the CZ is quite safe at this point, but this may change.

c) The licence giver (i.e. copyright holder) is not WP or CZ, it is the author himself. Any re-licencing is in his sole hands. Therefore, CZ cannot re-licence the content to make money (or even for free) to anyone, _unless_ the copyright has been transferred in some way (e.g. non-exclusive).

d) Because of c) neither WP or CZ can do anything against re-users violating the licence, it is in the sole hands of the copyright holder, i.e. the author, to pursue his rights.

e) Transfer of copyright is a double sided blade: Together with the rights CZ acquires about the content, it assumes the responsability of a publisher, which WP avoids for good rason: If the risk of being publisher rather than space provider is not obvious to you, read e.g. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21407 This lawsuit (as well as others I know of) would have got an entirely different flavour.

f) The images mentioned on the forum which would be usable to CZ only if CZ has non-profit licence (I actually agree to that argument, but think it has to be thought through more thoroughly) will in any case hardly have their copyright transferred to CZ, so no re-licencing of those to make money.

That is to say, a non-commercial license is intended as a restriction on the actions of the *commercial entities*, not upon *Citzendium* itself and that Citizendium is free to license its content to whatever commercial entities it chooses at whatever cost (or no cost) for however long it likes.

I am aware that I do not understand these licenses perhaps as well as I should so some enlightenment would be appreciated on this matter.

If the above be the case then it does appear to change some of the arguments in favour of a commercial license that state a commercial license should be chosen because commercial entities (like Google perhaps) may not be willing to pay for content, especially if it is available elsewhere for free.

Thanks. I think it is odd that more people haven’t answered this question directly, and I think it is an important question to answer. In fact, if CZ does adopt a free license like GFDL or CC-BY-SA, it should be a requirement of those who get accounts to answer the question (*) in the affirmative.

(*) Only slightly modified. Your question is “Do you favor a license that allows CBS, Fox, the New York Times, English tabloids, Chinese propaganda sheets, Yahoo!, Google, and all sorts of giant new media companies to come, to use our content? Without compensation?” In order to sign up for CZ, applicants should answer “Do you agree to license your contributions under a license that allows CBS, Fox, the New York Times, English tabloids, Chinese propaganda sheets, Yahoo!, Google, and all sorts of giant new media companies to use your content? Without compensation?”

“Here’s the question, then. If we use a license that permits commercial reuse–CC-by-sa or GFDL–then every major media company in the world could, and probably would, use CZ content. Do you favor a license that allows… all sorts of giant new media companies to come, to use our content? Without compensation?”

That’s telling a half-truth. Because the true meaning of licenses like CC-BY-SA is the following:

“Here’s the question, then. If we use a license that permits commercial reuse–CC-by-sa or GFDL–then every major media company in the world could, and probably would, use CZ content. Do you favor a license that allows… all sorts of giant new media companies to come, to use our content? Without compensation, but with the requirement to acknowledge our copyright, to link to us, and let others use that content freely just as they themselves have used it freely?”

That is a far more honest presentation of such a “very interesting question” than yours, Larry. Would you be willing to admit that you phrased your question in an extemely biased manner?