LSS/foundation-l-archives/2008 October 18-31

• What is this? A summary of the topics discussed on the mailing list foundation-l, grouped roughly by topic & chronological thread.
• Time period: October 17/18 -- October 31/November 1st 2008 (2 weeks, Saturday to Saturday)
• NOTES: Each link is to the first post on that topic in the selected time period that was found. In the effort to group topics together, some threads are listed out of chronological order.
• If you want to know more please click the links to the list archives. Many discussions are very long and complex. Navigate to other posts in the threaded discussion by clicking "next" or "previous" in the archives (you must be viewing the archives in thread view for this to work). Note that sometimes threads jump around -- view the whole monthly archive by subject if you want to make sure to read every message on a topic.
• Important topics: Topics that generated a lot of discussion or that are especially important are bolded.
• Announcements: Topics that are official WMF board, staff or chapter announcements or reports are also underlined.
• P.S. list authors are not responsible for any clumsy summaries. Please edit if something is misrepresented. Suggestions? Comments? Please post at the LSS talk page.

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Summary

1. New developers -- what ho! New developers in the WMF office. Welcome, folks. [1]
2. Database rights; a legal ruling in the ECJ (see last summary for the start of this) [2]
3. Licensing stuff (and we don't mean driver's licenses):
   1. The License Situation -- What's up with the GSFDL, CC-GFDL compatibility (being worked on!), how to get the FSF to do stuff (see "GFDL 1.3", shortly to be released), how we define free, etc. [3] (thread jump: [4])
   2. but oh snap: some folks don't like CC-BY-3.0. (What do we think of CC, anyway? Does relicensing pose problems?) [5]
   3. Attribution of content from Wikipedia What's appropriate? What should we ask of reusers? Erik asks for feedback. Lots and lots and lots of discussion ensues. [6] (thread jumps: [7], [8])
   4. Ownership of content -- who owns this stuff, anyway? IANAL (and IAAL) opinions ensue. [9]
   5. Hungarian Wikinews license and other wikinews licenses that are already CC, and compatibility when GFDL migrates [10]
   6. Schools Wikipedia (cd selection of en: content) -- did they properly attribute their content? [11]
   7. Nasty debate on fair use on en:wp. (I hear there's a cream for that.) Foundation input? [12]
4. Technical difficulties with invented language codes [13] (ed note: not, as I originally thought, about invented languages.)
5. Board meeting report from Michael Snow [14]
6. Eric Zachte pageview stats! [15] ( ed: any day that involves Zachte stats is a good day)
7. New projects and languages -- changes to the page where requests are made. [16]
8. Report to the Board: from Erik on behalf of Sue. [17]
9. Fundraiser updates and designs for translators to give feedback on, from Erik (leads to discussion, bizarrely, about whether WP is a nonprofit) [18]
   1. "Fundraising is important" according to Seth Godin [19]
10. Communication problems in the community:
    1. "We have the problem". A long post, and much discussion of it (see next month as well). [20]
    2. New group on meta for discussion of these communication problems [21]
    3. Mailing lists -- participation is down -- what does that mean for the community? [22]
    4. re: mailing lists --reading blogs can help! [23]
11. Announcements for translation in various sizes -- give a translator a break! How about S, M and L announcements? [24]
12. Chapters!
    1. New announcement list for chapters [25]
    2. Chapters business from the Board meeting meeting [26]
    3. Subnational chapters FAQ from the WMF [27]
    4. Idea: sister chapters -- what if chapters paired up to help each other out and share info? [28]
13. First ever Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report! Woo-hoo! From Jay Walsh. [29]