Talk:Wikinews/WIKINEWS LICENSE PROPOSAL : WNL 0.1

Should the section that the license is not intended to restrict original author's ability to publish, etc., be moved to the preamble?

Should Wikinews be defined as a project of the Wikimedia Foundation?

Restrictions

This is the section which I understand the least, and here is my suggested text. But I think it needs to be edited/commented on before I include it. - Amgine

Restrictions

1. License, access.
   1. You may copy, distribute, and publicly perform the Work only under the terms of this License, and you must include a copy of, or the URI for, this license with every copy of the Work You distribute, perform or display.
   2. You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted by it.
   3. You may not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License.
   4. You may not distribute, publicly display or perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. This applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License.
2. Credit
   1. If you distribute, publicly display or perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: attribution to Wikinews as the Licensor designate for copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means; the title of the Work; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Wikinews," or "Report based on original Work by Wikinews"). Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.
   2. If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from the Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any credit as required by clause IV(2.a), as requested.
   3. If You create a Derivative Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Derivative Work any credit as required by clause IV(2.a), as requested.

Yet Another Content License

Free content license proliferation is troublesome. Please make a strong argument for why this license is not simply superior to other available licenses, but worth the inherent cons (interoperability, familiarity) of a custom license. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 19:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your argument in principle, but dispute it in specific. In what way is it "troublesome"? Would not this argument also be the one to say Wikinews itself, an alternative to other news sources, is "troublesome"? Or Wikipedia, as there are other encyclopedias available? Or the free content license concept itself? But to respond to your demand for a strong argument (which you did not provide), here are a few points:

• A specific license for Wikinews (and possibly other WMF projects, due to its focus on Site-oriented accreditation) is less generic, more precise, and therefore more defensible (courts privilege specificity.)
• A purpose-built license can take into account interoperability, a specific lack in the current licensure of Wikinews and Wikipedia. In fact, the current version does so.
• This license is fundamentally based on the Creative Commons licensure, and while the specifics of the language will likely continue to evolve the basic summary will remain the same as has the CC licenses themselves. You probably have never known about the many changes to their legal code, because their basic protections have remained constant and familiar. This license will act in the same manner; it should seamlessly replace the CC-by in use, but be specific for Wikinews.
• A further point of weakness of creating, as you put it, Yet Another Content License is the cost of developing and maintaining that license. To offset this cost is the benefit of not being subject to licensure upgrades save only those which are specifically beneficial to Wikinews, as well as the ability to create upgrades as and if they are found to be necessary rather than waiting on the acceptance of upgrade requests. In short, the license is responsive to us and our needs unlike current licensures.

I hope I have provided strong arguments in favour of creating a Wikinews licensure. I would like to have further input, however, on what is needed in such a license because while there is a need for a specific license it doesn't need to be this license. - Amgine

Thank you for adding these explanatory thoughts. I am not convinced that a specific WNL is called for; however, I would feel better about a license which was significantly shorter - without a good deal of the word-mincing and redundancy, particularly in sections III, V, and VI. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 09:08, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

<nod> Sections V & VI are standard legal boilerplate text; perhaps I can find a "Plain Speaking Law" interpretation since they are very standard. Section III will require more research, I think. I was wondering, do you think a "summary" such as the ones used at CC (with links to the actual legal "code") would be better, or staying with the actual legal code? Thanks for looking and offering suggestions. - Amgine 16:58, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

“Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms”

Since it defines Licensor as the “Wikinews project of the Wikimedia Foundation”. The later section “Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms” is giving the Foundation the right to release our work under any license they chose. This means that they could change it at any time to a license that include terms that are unacceptable. If we are to define the Licensor as the Foundation, it should include some sort of requirement that future license choices are in the same spirit as this one. --Cspurrier 00:49, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Mmmh, there may be a problem of understanding here : the licensor is not the Foundation but the authors of the article. And since the license will be non-exclusive, it's only a matter of information to state that he is able to change it in the future. --soufron 12:43, 5 September 2005 (UTC)