RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

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RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Galen Charlton :: Rate this Message:

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Hi,

Content on the Koha wiki (http://wiki.koha.org/) is currently
available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).  MJ Ray has
pointed out on #koha that this is a problem.  I agree with him for the
following reasons:

* The non-commercial use clause prevents any commercial entity from
reusing content from the wiki (with proper attribution) in training
materials.
* The Koha manual is licensed under the GPL, and a CC-BY-NC-SA license
is not compatible, making it questionable whether content from the
wiki can be incorporated into the manual.
* Many edits on the wiki were made by people acting as an employee of
a Koha support vendor or a paid consultant.
* It is not clear that there was a conscious decision by the Koha
project to use CC-BY-NC-SA - it may well be the case that this license
was chosen by default or by accident when the wiki was migrated to
DokuWiki.

Consequently, I propose that we relicense the wiki under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).  As with the current
license, this means that wiki content can be reused, but only with
proper attribution and the requirement that derivative works be
available under a compatible license.

Relicensing would require the consent of those who have made
significant edits to the wiki.  I propose that we follow a process
similar to Wikipedia's proposed relicensing
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update):

[1] The electorate will be the set of people meeting all of the
following criteria:

* have a registered account on wiki.koha.org
* have created at least one page or made at least 5 edits by the end
of the day on 5 May 2009 according to the wiki server's clock.
* have a valid email address

I will put together a list of people meeting those criteria by the end
of the week and send them each of them an email to the address
registered on the wiki.  Anybody whose email bounces will not be
considered part of the electorate unless they contact me.

[2] The election will run next week during the 72 hours spanning 13
May to 15 May in the US Eastern time zone.  The ballot will have three
options:

* Yes, I am in favor of this change
* No, I am opposed to this change
* I do not have an opinion on this change

If more than 50% of the people who cast a vote either accept or reject
the change, the vote will carry.  If no majority is obtained, or if
the majority of voters express no opinion, we'll go back to the
drawing board and discuss this.  I will use one of the DokuWiki voting
plugins to run the vote.

Comments on the substance of the proposal or the proposed voting
procedure are welcome.

Regards,

Galen
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Ben Finney-12 :: Rate this Message:

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Galen Charlton <galen.charlton@...>
writes:

> * The Koha manual is licensed under the GPL, and a CC-BY-NC-SA license
> is not compatible, making it questionable whether content from the
> wiki can be incorporated into the manual.
[…]

> Consequently, I propose that we relicense the wiki under the Creative
> Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
> (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). As with the current
> license, this means that wiki content can be reused, but only with
> proper attribution and the requirement that derivative works be
> available under a compatible license.

But it also doesn't solve the incompatibility between the Koha manual,
licensed under GPL, and the Wiki content.

Why not license the wiki content also under GPL? Then the same license
terms apply to all the software: programs, documentation, and wiki.

> Relicensing would require the consent of those who have made
> significant edits to the wiki.

Yes. Thanks for giving the details of what's needed.

> Comments on the substance of the proposal or the proposed voting
> procedure are welcome.

I'm very much in favour of moving to license terms that make managing
the whole project smoother.

--
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Galen Charlton :: Rate this Message:

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Hi,

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Ben Finney <ben+koha@...> wrote:
> But it also doesn't solve the incompatibility between the Koha manual,
> licensed under GPL, and the Wiki content.
>
> Why not license the wiki content also under GPL? Then the same license
> terms apply to all the software: programs, documentation, and wiki.

Good idea - the GPL seems to have worked OK for the manual.  MJ and I
discussed this a bit more on #koha yesterday, and MJ also suggested
either the GPL or a free-for-all.  For the sake of completeness, the
other licenses that came up in the discussion include:

CC-BY - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
CC0 - http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/

I now think that the GPL is the way to go.  I've updated the
relicensing page on the wiki
(http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing); are there any other
comments about the license or the voting process?

Regards,

Galen
--
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Chris Cormack-6 :: Rate this Message:

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2009/5/8 Galen Charlton <galen.charlton@...>:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Ben Finney <ben+koha@...> wrote:
>> But it also doesn't solve the incompatibility between the Koha manual,
>> licensed under GPL, and the Wiki content.
>>
>> Why not license the wiki content also under GPL? Then the same license
>> terms apply to all the software: programs, documentation, and wiki.
>
> Good idea - the GPL seems to have worked OK for the manual.  MJ and I
> discussed this a bit more on #koha yesterday, and MJ also suggested
> either the GPL or a free-for-all.  For the sake of completeness, the
> other licenses that came up in the discussion include:
>
> CC-BY - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
> CC0 - http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/
>
> I now think that the GPL is the way to go.  I've updated the
> relicensing page on the wiki
> (http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing); are there any other
> comments about the license or the voting process?
>
Just a simple
me too

To the idea of the GPL

Chris
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Parent Message unknown Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by gsl-2 :: Rate this Message:

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Excuse me for perhaps coming out of left field with this, but is GPL the correct technical name for GPL documentation? I'm thinking this might be more correct:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License

Note on the above link:

"(GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, "

"The GFDL was designed for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software."


Greg

-------------------------

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Cormack" <chris@...>
To: "Galen Charlton" <galen.charlton@...>
Cc: koha-devel@..., koha@...
Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2009 4:14:30 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: Re: [Koha] RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

2009/5/8 Galen Charlton <galen.charlton@...>:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Ben Finney <ben+koha@...> wrote:
>> But it also doesn't solve the incompatibility between the Koha manual,
>> licensed under GPL, and the Wiki content.
>>
>> Why not license the wiki content also under GPL? Then the same license
>> terms apply to all the software: programs, documentation, and wiki.
>
> Good idea - the GPL seems to have worked OK for the manual.  MJ and I
> discussed this a bit more on #koha yesterday, and MJ also suggested
> either the GPL or a free-for-all.  For the sake of completeness, the
> other licenses that came up in the discussion include:
>
> CC-BY - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
> CC0 - http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/
>
> I now think that the GPL is the way to go.  I've updated the
> relicensing page on the wiki
> (http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing); are there any other
> comments about the license or the voting process?
>
Just a simple
me too

To the idea of the GPL

Chris
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Ben Finney-12 :: Rate this Message:

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gsl <gsl@...> writes:

> Excuse me for perhaps coming out of left field with this, but is GPL
> the correct technical name for GPL documentation? I'm thinking this
> might be more correct:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License

No. The FDL is not compatible with the GPL, and has many freedom
problems besides. I disagree strongly with the FSF promotion of the FDL
for works; it's needlessly restrictive and divisive.

The current Koha manual is licensed under GPL and that's good because
the manual is licensed compatibly with the programs. The wiki content
licensed under the same terms would be a good move.

--
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  `\   river to save a solid gold baby? Maybe we'll never know.” —Jack |
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Thomas Dukleth-3 :: Rate this Message:

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[I had intended to write about this issue earlier but I had thought that
addressing the issue had been postponed until after settling some other
issues.  The originally proposed date for a vote passed as community
attention became devoted to other issues.]

I think that the basic wiki content relicensing proposal is good but there
are some mistaken presumptions and the ambiguity of the ballot question
needs fixing,  http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing .

I have a very brief examination of the history of the difficulty and a
proposed remedy for the ambiguity of the ballot question.

I also introduce other possibilities than relying upon the supposition of
a favourable reading of the GPL to cover wiki content.  I reject those
other possibilities which I introduce and offer licensing under GPL 2 with
the or later clause as the least worst option at the present time.


1.  DIFFERENCE BETWEEK THE KOHA WIKI AND WIKIPEDIA.

Wikipedia used a similar process but also had the benefit of invoking the
GFDL with an or a later version clause.  FSF made a specific modification
to GFDL 1.3 allowing Wikipedia to switch to the CC-BY SA license.  There
is no similar provision in any CC-BY NC SA license allowing relicensing
under the GPL.  However, Wikiipedia had a specific problem about
relicensing because the number of contributors are too many to have a vote
which would have approached significant agreement even with the unanimous
ascent of the most devoted contributors.

The Koha community does not have the same problem with the Koha wiki
because Koha is a relatively small community where it is much easier to
obtain ascent and agreement.  Obviously the Koha community was too small
for people to pay enough attention to the default DokuWiki content license
to recognise it as a problem at an earlier point.

This is a case where it is fortunate that if the wiki is a work of joint
authorship and not merely a collection of separate works then at least US
legal practise would allow significant contributors to relicense the work
as a whole without needing the agreement of all contributors.  [I have
written about the joint versus collective works issue in the absence of
copyright assignment when it might go against free software interests in a
thread on the koha-devel list from 2007
http://www.nabble.com/copyright-holder-ts10219512.html .]


2.  AMBIGUITY OF LICENSING QUESTION.

There is no precise question on the wiki relicensing ballot.  Do we mean
GPL 2 invoked with the or later clause as with the Koha code itself?

"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version."

I suppose that we could rearrange the words to something like following in
which program and software have been substituted in a way which reads well
in English.

"You can redistribute Koha Wiki content and/or modify the content under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version."

The ambiguity issue needs addressing.  Once addressed, I think that this
would be the best we can reasonably do for now.

This really leaves us with supposing that the GPL software license would
be read correctly for covering non-software works when it would not
necessarily be read in such a manner.  I suspect that this supposition of
favourable license reading will work in the Koha community and that there
will be no real problems about it.

What legal advise has been given to the Debian community about how to at
least try to invoke the license well for documentation under the GPL?
Documentation licensing has certainly been an inflammatory issue in the
Debian community.


3.  INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION LICENSES.

The GPL itself is a software license with terms covering software.  The
language of the GPL is not compatible with other types works which are not
software perhaps because the language is more carefully constructed for
its copyleft purpose covering software than licenses written specifically
for other types of works.  There really is no clearly good available
remedy because FSF have not thought the problem of creating a GPL
compatible documentation license to be vexing enough in the universe of
problems relating to free software to devote enough of their limited
resources to addressing it.  A solution for documentation licensing for
people using the GPL needs an FSF solution which is one reason why
invoking the license with the or later clause is a good idea.

The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) was introduced for documentation
but had neglected the issue of compatibility with the software license
because of a need to preserve the integrity of opinions on free software
in essays bound into software manuals published by FSF.  Unfortunately,
FSF did not consult the software development community well enough when
writing the GFDL and relied to heavily on input from other publishers.
FSF really recognises what a mistake that was and has fixed there
processes.  The process of drafting an alternative GNU Simple Free
Documentation License (GSFDL) is not obtaining enough attention at FSF and
may be focused on fixing the invariant sections and cover texts issue
without addressing compatibility with the GPL.  Anyone can make comments
on the drafts for the next versions of GFDL and the proposed GSFDL and
help create better versions of the licenses,
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html .  When the GSFDL is issued,
there will likely be an upgrade path for works under GFDL which lack
invariant sections and cover texts.

[The free software community and FSF members can certainly influence FSF
but members do not control FSF or the terms of future license versions by
popular vote to prevent the open membership of FSF from being subverted by
opposing interests such as Microsoft had used in subverting the ISO
standards process over OOXML.]


4.  DISJUNCTIVE DUAL LICENSING.

I consider and reject the idea of two following possibilities for
disjunctive dual licensing as a remedy for the problem of licensing the
wiki content.  Bradley Kuhn likes the use of 'disjunctive' for authors
choosing multiple licenses and users having their choice of any or all of
the multiple licenses used by authors.  Perl uses disjuntive dual
licensing under both the Artistic License and the GPL.

[Bradley distinguishes disjunctive from what he supposes that most people
refer to simply as a dual licensing in a 'core source' business model
disfavouring free software.  In the 'core source' business model, a
company controlling all the copyright to a significant base of code may
produce a community version under a free software license and a version
with additional features under a proprietary license.]


Disjunctive dual licensing wiki content under both GPL 2 or later and
CC-BY SA unported 3.0 or later might address the problem.


4.1.  GLOBAL DISJUNCTIVE DUAL LICENSING.

I will refer to user choice of license for outside of the wiki where the
content inside the wiki is automatically under multiple licenses applying
to every wiki page as global disjunctive dual licensing.

Some people such as Bradley Kuhn encourage software projects to take such
an approach for documentation but he also knows that it is not really an
adequate remedy.  The idea in such a case would be that you would allow
the user to use the content outside the wiki in a choice any or all
specified licenses.  There would then be both the software license for any
code and a non-software license for any other content.

Such a remedy may be fine for code originating in the wiki.  However we
should not assume that the authorship of wiki content will originate with
people contributing directly to the wiki.  Code including help file texts
embodied as code could not be copied from the Koha code into the wiki if
the wiki allowed the CC-BY SA license which is not as strong or as precise
a copyleft license as the GPL and therefore incompatible with the GPL.
Pierrick Le Gall had a proposal from 2006 to have special pages in the
wiki used to contribute contextual help and better translations which
would have help text copied between the wiki and Koha in ways where no one
had noticed the license incompatibility problem.

The GPL licenses are fairly inclusive in allowing the incorporation of
works under other more permissive licenses.  However, even any possibility
of including CC-BY SA works as part of a work as a whole under the GPL
would be a one way possibility if the CC-BY SA parts would be modified
under the terms of the GPL for the work as a whole.


4.1.  MARKED DISJUNCTIVE DUAL LICENSING.

Providing GPL 2 or later and CC-BY SA or later as a default unless marked
otherwise as only GPL X or later is a possibility with much appeal for me.
 However, it may be too easy for people to forget to mark appropriately
even in the minority of cases where needed without strong support in the
wiki code itself for assisting with the process.  I think that such
marking would overly complicate contribution to the wiki.  If we ever need
such a feature as with any possible license upgrade in even some
alternative builds of Koha under GPL 3 or AGPL 3, we could create a
parallel wiki with a different default license invoked.


5.  CONCLUSION.

Perhaps question on relicensing the wiki should read as follows.

Should we relicense the wiki content as follows?

"You can redistribute Koha Wiki content and/or modify the content under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version."

We ought to seek legal advise about such matters.  The FSF would advise
against it as advocates for appropriate use of the license that is their
position.  The Software Freedom Law Center might have a similar answer but
at least the Software Freedom Law Center may be inclined to give a more
nuanced answer to the extent that it would not be a conflict of interest
given that they are council to FSF.


Thomas Dukleth
Agogme
109 E 9th Street, 3D
New York, NY  10003
USA
http://www.agogme.com
+1 212-674-3783


On Thu, May 7, 2009 12:25, Galen Charlton wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Ben Finney <ben+koha@...>
> wrote:
>> But it also doesn't solve the incompatibility between the Koha manual,
>> licensed under GPL, and the Wiki content.
>>
>> Why not license the wiki content also under GPL? Then the same license
>> terms apply to all the software: programs, documentation, and wiki.
>
> Good idea - the GPL seems to have worked OK for the manual.  MJ and I
> discussed this a bit more on #koha yesterday, and MJ also suggested
> either the GPL or a free-for-all.  For the sake of completeness, the
> other licenses that came up in the discussion include:
>
> CC-BY - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
> CC0 - http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/
>
> I now think that the GPL is the way to go.  I've updated the
> relicensing page on the wiki
> (http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing); are there any other
> comments about the license or the voting process?
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> VP, Research & Development, LibLime
> galen.charlton@...
> p: 1-888-564-2457 x709
> skype: gmcharlt
> _______________________________________________
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>
>

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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by MJ Ray-2 :: Rate this Message:

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Thomas Dukleth wrote:
> I have a very brief examination of the history of the difficulty and a
> proposed remedy for the ambiguity of the ballot question.

I think that the email was not very brief.  It seems unhelpful to send
a ~2000 word essay late in the process.  This was a live issue chased
in the last couple of general meetings, so the assumption it was
waiting indefinitely seems strange, but I acknowledge this could have
been flagged up more.

Nevertheless, let's address the two questions among those 2000 words
and some other points:-

> The Koha community does not have the same problem with the Koha wiki
> because Koha is a relatively small community where it is much easier to
> obtain ascent and agreement.

There are about 80 contributors to the Koha wiki.  Small, but big
enough to be a nuisance.

> Obviously the Koha community was too small
> for people to pay enough attention to the default DokuWiki content license
> to recognise it as a problem at an earlier point.

Why is this obvious?  I asked for wikis to be GPL in the general
meeting on 2005-05-21, before the main one moved to Dokuwiki.  I feel
that the Koha community was paying attention, but wasn't careful
enough then and now we are dealing with the consequences.

[...]
> 2.  AMBIGUITY OF LICENSING QUESTION.
>
> There is no precise question on the wiki relicensing ballot.  Do we mean
> GPL 2 invoked with the or later clause as with the Koha code itself? [...]

Yes, that is what we mean.  The ballot has been updated.  That was
mentioned in yesterday's meeting, so an attendee mentioning it here
too seems a bit strange.

> I suppose that we could rearrange the words to something like following in
> which program and software have been substituted in a way which reads well
> in English.

No.  The wiki is software and program is a word defined in the GPLv2.
It seems like an unnecessary risk to replace them with more ambiguous
words like "content".

[...]
> What legal advise has been given to the Debian community about how to at
> least try to invoke the license well for documentation under the GPL?

I don't know off the top of my head, but the Debian project does use
the GPL for its own manuals like
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/index.en.html

http://lists.debian.org/search.html may find some discussion of the
manual licensing choice, but I didn't find the right search terms.

> Documentation licensing has certainly been an inflammatory issue in the
> Debian community.

I think it's more been an inflammatory issue between the debian
project and some other groups which want to use their manuals as a way
to force debian to carry their adverts unmodified.  As the long
history of using the GPL for documentation shows, the debian project
accepts that.

> 3.  INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION LICENSES.
>
> The GPL itself is a software license with terms covering software.  The
> language of the GPL is not compatible with other types works which are not
> software perhaps because the language is more carefully constructed for
> its copyleft purpose covering software than licenses written specifically
> for other types of works.  [...]

However, most of the terms are also clearly appropriate for a wiki,
which is usually software, has source code which gets compiled and so
on.

> Anyone can make comments
> on the drafts for the next versions of GFDL and the proposed GSFDL and
> help create better versions of the licenses,
> http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html .  When the GSFDL is issued,
> there will likely be an upgrade path for works under GFDL which lack
> invariant sections and cover texts.

The comment system, stet, is broken and unusuable by some.  I have
reported bugs and had some of them fixed, but at least one has
regressed enough to lock me out since.

If you do get a comment in, it seems rare that substantial comments
get a reply, much less a resolution.

I don't know why the upgrade path is likely, not when it will happen.

> [The free software community and FSF members can certainly influence FSF

The FDL and GPLv3 consultations has made me think that their influence
is minimal and ultimately FSF is accountable to no-one except the IRS,
its home state and its board.

> [...] We ought to seek legal advise about such matters.  [...]

Feel free.  On IRC, you said you don't want the relicensing ballot
postponed.  http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2009-10-08#i_317670
I'm not sure where this leaves us.  I've already used the co-op's
legal service this year for a Koha topic, so I'm reluctant to call on
it for a topic which seems pretty specialised and also far more
obvious to me and we won't get an answer in the 90mins before it
closes today.

Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef)  LMS developer and webmaster at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op
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Re: RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

by Thomas Dukleth-3 :: Rate this Message:

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My previous message on the issue of Koha wiki content relicensing had
caused unintended confusion for some as I attempted to make up for my lack
of earlier comment.

The wording deficiency in the wiki content relicensing ballot has been
fixed.  I tried to be clear that I really had only that simple request at
the beginning of my previous message.

I am all in favour of relicensing the wiki content under GPL 2 or later.
From 9-11 October, I urge everyone who has contributed a wiki page or 5 or
more edits to login and vote in favour of relicensing at
http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing .

Any other legal fine points which I raised in my previous message are
nothing more than mere fine points, given the lack of viable alternatives.
 My previous message described the lack of alternatives at some length.
Although somewhat awkward, much of the free software world rightly prefers
licensing documentation and content similar to the wiki under the GPL.

The default DokuWiki content license, CC-BY NC SA, is a configuration
option in DokuWiki which was never examined by the Koha project for
configuring differently.  The license is not compatible with the GPL.  The
use of that license is essentially an accident of installing DokuWiki and
not examining all the configuration options.

If the matter is left uncorrected, it could hold back the project in
future.  Please vote.

The remainder of my reply is inline:

On Thu, October 8, 2009 15:03, MJ Ray wrote:
> Thomas Dukleth wrote:
>> I have a very brief examination of the history of the difficulty and a
>> proposed remedy for the ambiguity of the ballot question.
>
> I think that the email was not very brief.

Sorry for my poor wording.  I had intended to state only that my treatment
of the history was fairly brief but that is still a relative term.

> It seems unhelpful to send
> a ~2000 word essay late in the process.

I needed to make comment when I had the opportunity to think well on the
matter.  Lack of updates to the wiki page had confused me about when the
issue would be put forward again and I do sometimes miss some comments in
IRC meetings.  I know that others have also missed some of my comments
during meetings in the past.

My main goal was to quickly encourage clarity on the ballot and not to
disrupt the process in any way.  I think that if the ballot question is
posed with complete clarity as it is now there is no problem.

My secondary goal was to present an argument at length about why I believe
that an affirmative vote on the ballot question is the best solution
available.

[...]

> I asked for wikis to be GPL in the general
> meeting on 2005-05-21, before the main one moved to Dokuwiki.  I feel
> that the Koha community was paying attention, but wasn't careful
> enough then and now we are dealing with the consequences.

I applaud your early attention to the issue.  I know that it is difficult
to persuade others to pay attention to such issues to avoid issues such as
license compatibility problems.

[...]

>
> [...]
>> 2.  AMBIGUITY OF LICENSING QUESTION.
>>
>> There is no precise question on the wiki relicensing ballot.  Do we mean
>> GPL 2 invoked with the or later clause as with the Koha code itself?
>> [...]
>
> Yes, that is what we mean.  The ballot has been updated.  That was
> mentioned in yesterday's meeting, so an attendee mentioning it here
> too seems a bit strange.

I believed that I knew what was meant but the ballot had previously
referred to a history of the matter without a simple clear question which
seemed ambiguous to me.

[...]

>
>> I suppose that we could rearrange the words to something like following
>> in
>> which program and software have been substituted in a way which reads
>> well
>> in English.

[...]

> No.  The wiki is software and program is a word defined in the GPLv2.
> It seems like an unnecessary risk to replace them with more ambiguous
> words like "content".

This issue is awkward but one in which free software communities should
have no real problem.

The document content created by the users of a program is usually not
considered part of the program nor a derived work of the program, and
therefore, not necessarily covered by the same license as the program
itself.  In the case of a wiki, I can see an argument that the formatting
and arrangement of the content might fall under the license for the wiki
program itself.  In any case, the concern is significantly about reuse of
the content outside the wiki and possibly divorced from factors which
would have been a necessary product of the wiki program itself.

The data vs. code distinction is recognised by the DokuWiki developers.
DokuWiki code is available under GPL 2 but not under a CC license.
However, the default license for content and designated as such as set by
the footer license option is CC-BY NC SA, which is not compatible with the
GPL and the basis of our problem.  GPL is not even available as a
configuration option for the content license appearing in the footer,
therefore,  we will have to modify the DocuWiki code or add a custom
template to provide a GPL 2 or later statement for the footer.

[...]

>> [...] We ought to seek legal advise about such matters.  [...]
>
> Feel free.

Seeking legal advice on such matters is a good idea in future but because
of the data vs. code aspect of this issue I doubt it would inform us of
anything significant that we do not already know to manage for the
relicensing process.  I think that it was inappropriate for me to raise
the issue of seeking legal advice at this stage to inform us of answers
which we can anticipate.  I tried to explain in my previous message that
the answers which we could anticipate on this issue would not be likely to
be helpful.

[...]

Again, I urge those who have contributed a page or 5 or more edits to
login and vote in favour of relicensing the Koha wiki content under GPL 2
or later at http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=relicensing from 9 -11
October.


Thomas Dukleth
Agogme
109 E 9th Street, 3D
New York, NY  10003
USA
http://www.agogme.com
+1 212-674-3783


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