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will add a note to the top of any project:copyrights page that exists noting that the page is deprecated and may now be out of date.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)

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