Forum:Licensing update June 19, 2009


 * Summary: Most Wikia sites to transition to a Creative Commons license this week.

The text of most Wikia wikis is available under a free content license called the GFDL. This license was chosen because it was the license that Wikipedia used. The latest version of the GFDL gives Wikia the option of making a one-time transition to the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License.

A vote by Wikipedia and its sister projects showed almost 88% of editors were in support of the change. Following previous discussion on Wikia, everyone was supportive of such a change, and it was noted that some wikis have requested the ability to opt out. With this in mind, I will be switching all Wikia sites to Creative Commons this Friday.

Advantages

The Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License essentially gives everyone the same freedoms that the GFDL does; the content can be used for any purpose, derivatives must be released under the same free license, and attribution must be given. The license is simpler to use and easier to understand, and has been translated into many languages. The switch means Wikia sites can continue to share information with Wikipedia and with each other. It also opens up many new possibilities for sharing content with other sites that are under a compatible Creative Commons license. Creative Commons content can be found using Creative Commons search which includes results from a few places including Yahoo CC search and Google CC search.

What happens next?

Licensing will replace the old Copyrights page.

Wiki settings will be updated by staff so that links in the footer and other places say CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL and so that links point to Licensing instead of project:copyrights. Where pages such as MediaWiki:Copyrightpage exist, they will be manually updated. A bot will add a note to the top of any project:copyrights page that exists noting that the page is deprecated and may now be out of date.

If you would like to help, you can remove old text from Project:Copyrights and instead link to Licensing. If MediaWiki:Licenses exists, it can be updated if needed, though this is not essential. Speakers of languages other than English are welcome to translate the page at Licensing and link to those translations so long as they contain a prominent notice that the English version takes precedence. Messages such as MediaWiki:Edittools or MediaWiki:Lastmodified should not be used for copyright information. If these exist on your wiki, check them to make sure they only contain what they're meant to.

More information


 * This change does not affect ownership of the content.
 * This only affects wikis that are already under the GFDL.
 * All admins will be notified via a talk page message.
 * Any wiki that wants to continue using the GFDL should leave a message here.
 * This affects only text, not images which are already under a variety of different licenses.
 * More details can be found in the previous discussion at Forum:Licensing update and in Wikimedia's blog post.
 * Dual or multi-licensing is neither required nor recommended, but any wikis that want to do this or that require other custom settings should post here.
 * The full text of both licenses can be found at GFDL and CC-BY-SA (CC summary here)

Questions

If you have any questions, please add a section below.

Angela (talk) 00:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

=Comments=

More on images
I understand that images can be of others licences, but, on the french wikis i started, the default licence for images is (was) GFDL (not talking about the load of fair use images on fr.guildwars). I think reordering some lines in the file licence selection drop down menu so future files could have the new licence as default could be a good idea. What do you think ? — TulipVorlax 02:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It's up to each wiki what they do about images, but I'm happy to make changes to default license drop-down to provide a better default upload license. Angela (talk) 02:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia
That and similar templates will need rewording. Can we all just copy from Starter Wikia? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have just updated w:c:starter:Template:Wikipedia. Let me know if you find other examples. For wikis that have never edited that template, it should be reasonably easy for us to overwrite with a bot. Angela (talk) 03:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've updated w:c:anime:Template:Wikipedia, and the newer version w:c:animanga:Template:Wikipedia for the new sync que that will be replacing the old Wikia ACG one in the future. I'll try to remember to run the sync bot to sync the new template around to all animanga wiki in the que on the 19th, feel free to send me a reminder poke. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Jun 18, 2009 @ 05:54 (UTC)

FFWiki Licensing
The staff of the Final Fantasy Wiki is presently a bit confused as to which licensing our wiki is under. We had assumed we were already working under the Creative Commons (CCASA) license by default, in which case this change would not affect us. We would like to know if this is true, and if so, who determined that the FFWiki was under CCASA instead of GFDL in the first place. Any other information that would help clear things up and point us in the direction we need to go to continue working under CCASA would much much appreciated. Thanks! 8 bit  04:07, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry I didn't know about this earlier. Officially, that wiki has always been GFDL because the license settings were not changed, meaning the meta data of every article (which you can see if you click 'view source') says it's GFDL. Edits have been made to this page which implies some of the content was CC-NC and some GFDL. Users with 'English' set as their preferred language in their preferences have probably thought the wiki was partly CC, but those with other languages were being told it was GFDL. One big problem is the type of Creative Commons License chosen (CC-BY-NC-SA) does not make it compatible with Wikipedia, and yet Wikipedia content has been added there. This edit makes it more confusing as you can't mix these 2 licenses. I suggest you take this back to the wiki and see if they can work out what to do. When the community has decided what the official license is going to be, let me know, and I can set that in the meta data. One option might be to remove any content you've imported from Wikipedia or other Wikia sites, or to tag that as being an exception to the licensing of the rest of the wiki. Angela (talk) 06:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

NC?
As Wikipedia, we will be using CC-by-as, not CC-by-nc-sa. If I understood correctly, CC-by-as allows anyone to use material for commercial purposes, whether CC-by-nc-sa (NC=NonCommercial), does not. CC.org states: "Creative Commons Attribution (BY) license allows one to share and remix (create derivative works), even for commercial use, so long as attribution is given."Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

Again, if I understood correctly, will somebody be a able to adapt a wiki into a book (especially a gaming wiki adapted into a guidebook), citing the contributors, sell it and making money from it? -- EXE.  eseguibile 08:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That's right, we'll be using CC-BY-SA which does allow commercial use (the GFDL also allowed that). The case against NC is a useful page to read to understand the reasons behind this.


 * People could make money from the content by selling it, but they could only do that under the terms of the license, which means they'd have to tell people it was available for free and attribute the original authors, usually by linking to the original wiki article. That means they really need to add some value to it to make it saleable. One example is letting people "print on demand", so you could essentially make your own collection of favorite articles and then pay for that to be sent to you as a physical book. PediaPress is one company that does this, and there are currently links on Wikipedia to let you put together your book. See this funny picture for another example of a printed version of Wikipdia :)
 * Wiki content works along the same way that open source software does - it's free, and anyone has the right to sell it, but unless you add value, no one would. If people are adding value, then that's likely to be beneficial to the original wiki anyway, so hopefully it's seen as a positive thing.
 * Angela (talk) 09:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't worry too much, anyone who tried to sell a direct copy of wiki's content would fail spectacularly; it's too easy to access a wiki these days, everyone in the developed world pretty much has a computer. Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 09:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Holy crap
Is there a way to keep the GFDL? We just got the the mentality through our users that your work is GFDL and not copyright, now we'll have to teach them about CC! -- Zapwire  Δ  The d ark  side  of  the moon 09:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You don't need to learn much about CC - it's about the same thing, you still have to provide attribution when copying. There are a few minor differences though. Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 09:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * But the users just knew it's GFDL! We also make references to the GFDL all over. Our user base prefers the GFDL. -- Zapwire  Δ  The d ark  side  of  the moon 09:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * One big avantage of Creative Commons is that's it's easier to understand than the GFDL. Look at the summary page. Simply, you are free to share, and to remix, as long as you attribute and share alike. Creative Commons have some great videos explaining why these licenses need to exist (example). I understand that's you're used to one thing, but if you take a minute to look at what the Creative Commons license is, I'm sure you'll see it's a big improvement. Angela (talk) 09:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems like more of the same to me. The only thing is that it doesn't have the FSF backing it. I prefer to have a license made by the GNU guys, I can trust that they're free. -- <span style="color: white !important;">Zapwire <span style="color: white !important;"> Δ <span style="color: red !important;"> The d <span style="color: orange !important;">ark <span style="color: yellow !important;"> side <span style="color: green !important;"> of <span style="color: blue !important;"> the <span style="color: purple !important;">moon 09:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't on clubpenguinfanon
Users will be confused again, we have to change every GFDL image, change rukesets, and change a lot of files. I know the CC licenses are suckage. Please don't, please. Otherwise you'll have to help us migrate everything. -- <span style="color: white !important;">Zapwire <span style="color: white !important;"> Δ <span style="color: red !important;"> The d <span style="color: orange !important;">ark <span style="color: yellow !important;"> side <span style="color: green !important;"> of <span style="color: blue !important;"> the <span style="color: purple !important;">moon 09:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This doesn't affect images, so nothing will need to change. As I said above, this Creative Commons license is easier to understand than the GFDL. It's also much more widely used so brings more benefits to your wiki than the old license did. Please don't be worried about the change - it's not going to require changes on your wiki, and users don't need to do anything special to make this happen. Angela (talk) 09:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The users already just got omfortable with the GFDL, they'll be even worse with a new license. Just keep it, no arguments or flames please. -- <span style="color: white !important;">Zapwire <span style="color: white !important;"> Δ <span style="color: red !important;"> The d <span style="color: orange !important;">ark <span style="color: yellow !important;"> side <span style="color: green !important;"> of <span style="color: blue !important;"> the <span style="color: purple !important;">moon 09:43, 18 June 2009 (UTC)