Is Wikipedia available for use under CC-by-sa yet?
Question for Wikipedians out there: is Wikipedia available for use under CC-by-sa yet? I haven’t heard anything about this. If it hasn’t been decided, why not? Will this ever be declared? Surely we should expect it to be, given the triumphant announcement Lessig and Wales last December. Right?
I have to say I’m not so happy that Wikipedia might be using original Citizendium articles without the licenses really being interoperable. In short, if they want to release our articles under the GFDL, we should be able to release theirs under CC-by-sa.
Undo bravado not withstanding. If memory serves, Citizendium took a good long while to find it’s first license. Wikipedia is in the legally unenviable position of trying to adopt it’s second.
You are correct though, Citizendium material should not be used in Wikipedia without first ironing out the licensing issues.
Comment by Andrew Whitworth — June 22, 2008 @ 7:39 pm
Andrew, you’re right that we took a long time to decide on our license, and I don’t blame WP for taking a long time to adopt a second. I do blame Wales and Lessig, however, for presenting as a fait accompli last December what might not ever happen.
Comment by Larry Sanger — June 22, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
Larry, the relicensing of Wikipedia depends on three parties. You mention Wales and Lessig, but the most important party is the Free Software Foundation. Wikipedia cannot upgrade to a CC license directly. The draft of the new GFDL that was published a while ago allows WP to change to a special Gnu Wiki license, which will be compatible with a CC license.
So before the license change, the FSF will have to publish the new GFDL, and a new Wiki license. And the FSF takes its time to change their licenses, so I’m not surprised that it takes this long. Personally, I don’t expect it to happen this year. The big news of December for me was not that the license update was going to happen, but that Richard Stallman was even willing to consider it, so I’m not disappointed in the process yet.
Concerning the use of Citizendium material in Wikipedia: that shouldn’t happen; if it does, it’s a violation of copyright, and should be corrected. (We’re talking about articles originating on CZ, right? Not those that CZ copied from WP and updated.) How large is the problem? I haven’t seen any CZ articles on Wikipedia yet.
Comment by Eugene van der Pijll — June 23, 2008 @ 12:35 am
Eugene–using your assumption, we should think it odd that Wales and Stallman were feted for their announcement, then, when the announcement was really only Stallman’s to make.
As to use of CZ-originated articles on WP, I’ve only heard rumors.
Comment by Larry Sanger — June 23, 2008 @ 4:30 am