Licensing update/License comparison

The licensing update has been executed.
The results are available here. Please be aware that pages need to be updated to reflect the result and that some information may be obsolete. In the meantime, viewing the LU timeline might be helpful. Help with translations is of continuing appreciation.

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Licensing update

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The following table summarizes the similarities and differences between the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA)

	GFDL	CC-BY-SA
License author	Free Software Foundation	Creative Commons
Current version	1.3 (November 2008)	3.0 (February 2007)
Prior versions	1.2 (November 2002) 1.1 (March 2000)	2.5 (Fall 2005) 2.0 (May 2004) 1.0 (December 2002)
Designed for	Free software documentation	General use
Languages and jurisdictions	English language developed with United States jurisdictional context; no official translation, several unofficial translations	One generic version and more than 50 mutually compatible variants adapted for specific national jurisdictions and translated into the respective official languages
Attribution	Title page includes current authors and at least five principal authors of previous versions. Document must also include a history of all prior versions, their authors, and their network location (if any)	Current and previous authors and their designated sponsor institutions (if provided), title of work, URI associated with the work (if provided), acknowledgment of adaptation from prior work (if any).
Attribution placement	Attribution must physically accompany all copies	Attribution may be conveyed via any "reasonable means"
Copies must also include	The GFDL text, licensing notice, and all copyright notices	The CC-BY-SA text or a URI pointing to it, licensing notice, and all copyright notices (unless waived by the original authors)
Derivative works	Must be licensed under the GFDL	Must be licensed under CC-BY-SA
Aggregation	May be combined with "separate and independent" works in a "storage or distribution medium" without requiring the GFDL apply to the other works	May be "assembled into a collective whole" with one or more "separate and independent works" without requiring that CC-BY-SA apply to the other works
Copy prevention mechanisms	A re-distributor "may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying" of the work	A re-distributor may not "impose any effective technological measures" that restrict recipients from exercising their rights under the license
Open file formats	Distributors of more than 100 copies must, at minimum, include a URI where a machine-readable copy of the work's text and other media is available in a widely used format whose specification is publicly known. Such URI should remain available for at least a year after distribution of the last copy in a format that is not machine-readable.	No requirement for providing machine-readable copies nor for open file formats
Duration	Perpetual
Warranty disclaimers	Disclaimers must be preserved
Commercial use	Commercial use is allowed
Future versions	Authors may allow the license in the work to extend to all future versions of the license. (Allowing all future versions is required for text, but not images, on Wikimedia projects.)	Authors may allow the license in the work to extend to all future versions of the license. Authors must allow derivative versions to be created under future versions of the license.
Other license features	Allows for cover texts and invariant sections