Forum:Licensing update June 19, 2009

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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?

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add a note to the top of any project:copyrights page that exists noting that the page is deprecated and may now be out of date.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

Thanks.

It will still mean for fr.guildwars and fr.3d that i'll have to move some line around and change some bit of text in MediaWiki:Licenses as we have our own thing there (and it's in french).

There was personnal license templates wich said that images from an user or another were in GFDL. Sure, it can stay that way for the one that are already there, but i'll change my template for another one for futures images (if any). — TulipVorlax 15:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

ERF ! I just remember that fr.guildwars is not supposed to switch ! Lol. But if the Official GuildWars Wiki on wiki.guildwars.com is switching, that mean we have to. I need to check there... — TulipVorlax 15:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

For more infos, see #fr.guildwars.wikia. — TulipVorlax 02:15, 19 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! 8bit 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)

alphascript publishing.--AB 19:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

My concern, with regard to the NC thing, is that Wikia has several fan-wikis based on Wizard of the Coast's Dungeons and Dragons product line. WotC does not mind fan-websites (as they help Games Masters and therefore support their game), but they do not like anyone who claims ownership of their IP. And using a 'use this commercially' licence, when a 'non-commercial' alternative is available might send the wrong idea to their lawyers. I think that there could very easily be a market for someone to grab the complete parts of Forgotten Realms Wiki and turn them into a printed 'Encyclopedia of the Forgotten Realms'.

I'm not so sure that attracting the attention of WotC's lawers would be in the interest of the 'original wiki'. Still, unless someone actually tries to do this (and Forgotten Realms Wiki seems to be the only D&D wiki that is complete enough to make a cut and paste book viable) this is really a hypothetical question.

One thing I'd be interested to know is how Wikia could deal with a hypothetical complaint about the licence not being a NC one. If an IP owner made a complaint about a fan-encyclopedia wiki (on commercial activity grounds) how easy would it be to port that wiki over from Wikia's chosen CC licence to a NC version of the CC licence? Would this be something that Wikia could push through (as owners of the website)? Or would they need the concent of the wiki's admin (in which case, I could pre-authorise this action if it was necessary)? Or would they need the concent of every editor of every page (which would possibly require mass-deletion of articles where authors could not be contacted within the 'we will give you X days to fix this' period specified in a C&D letter)?

Another thing I'd be interested to know is if a wiki is legally one document or if each page on the wiki is legally a separate entity. Angela said: '...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', and that would seem to suggest that a hypothetical printed encyclopedia would need to have wiki page URLs as page footers or footnotes (or a URL index as an appendix). David Shepheard 19:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, the GFDL also allowed for commercial use so nothing is changing in that regard. Secondly, this does not impact on any company's IP. They still hold their copyrights and their trademarks. It is just the user-created content which is released under a free license - meaning the text that a user holds copyright to. For example, if you write about a chararacter from a comic, you're not giving anyone else the right to make a new comic which contains that character - that would still be a violation of any copyright or trademark the original comic author had. I don't actually know yet whether it's possible to port non-NC content to NC but in any case, I don't expect this would help in the sort of situation you're describing. It's also important to note that the license does not cover images. If you take a screenshot from a game, you don't have the right to release that under a free license because it's copyrighted by the game IP's owner. It may be Fair use on the wiki, but it would be up to a book publisher to determine whether it was also fair use in a book they were selling (I'd expect they'd have to go to the copyright holder of the game or whatever and get permission for that). Angela (talk) 04:00, 19 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 dark 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 dark 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. --Zapwire Δ The dark side of the moon 09:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with it as long as Wikia is like the way Wikipedia is now, which uses CC as it's main license but also relicenses it under the GFDL. Otherwise, heads will roll... Technopeasant 20:59, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Not sure how 'heads will roll', but I can see an advantage in keeping the GFDL if someone is making a wiki that is about GNU licenced software. That licence would allow someone to make an encyclopedia (how to or help system or something like that) that could be exported from the wiki and bundled into the software as interactive help system. A compatable licence would be a real advantage there. If you are talking of a generic non-software wiki, I think that the average user doesn't care about the licence that the wiki is published under. David Shepheard 22:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia content is not permanently under the GFDL. They will accept CC-only imports which then makes that article purely CC and not CC with a secondary license of GFDL. The outreach page on their site explains that dual licensing is not needed. Angela (talk) 04:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Than that's different and incredibly disappointing. Wikimedia and Wikia have been handed the golden opportunity to create a common reference point between CC and GFDL licensed sites, allowing both to mingle and share, and they are wasting it by sticking to only one license. If that is they way they are going than they should have stuck with GFDL 1.3, that way text can be shared across the many GFDL licensed sites, and with the CC transition clause in GFDL 1.3 allowing sharing across CC sites as well. Truly a wasted opportunity. It seems to me that the wiki bureaucrats are not seeing the full picture, and are not considering the collaborative world of the Internet at large. As noted by them, there are many CC licensed projects, both wiki and not, and plenty of GFDL ones, why can't we have unity instead of just switching to another camp? Does this mean that any site that still wants to use the GFDL is screwed? That is as bad as a operating system giant not allowing programs from older systems to run on new ones. Sorry for the rant but copyright is a fouled up system and it is the job of free sites to try and correct it, not revel in it. Also, these people seem to be only sticking to one side, and are only restating their positions when anyone challenges it ("What about other GFDL sites", "the CC is easier to understand". Ummm, A: that's opinion, and B: that does not justify a pure change). Just because there was a vote doesn't mean it shouldn't still be discussed. And one final note, Stallman and the FSF added the transition clause in 1.3 to be nice to CC licensed sites and to allow greater collaboration, by doing this Wikia and Wikimedia are invalidating the spirit of that clause. Your making it so users are stuck to only being able to redistribute under one licens again. Betraying the gift the FSF has given the world. Technopeasant 05:31, 19 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. --Zapwire Δ The dark side of the 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. --Zapwire Δ The dark side of the moon 09:43, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's not argue about it then. I suggest you take some time to understand the implications of what you're asking and weigh up the pros and cons of this. Angela (talk) 09:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Be careful Zapwire, since most wikis are on or are migrating to CC, not migrating would pose difficulties when for instance you want to copy from Wikipedia. Also, Creative Commons is completely trustworthy, and the license is much, much easier to understand, as I myself found out when I was voting for the Wikimedia change... Wjxhuang, the 888th Avatar ^{Talk} 10:35, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. Over on Wikipedia there are editors that break the editing guidelines all the time. Things go up without citation and there is a constant debate about the notability of fiction subjects. So if the most successful wiki in the world can not get people to obey those sort of rules, I fail to see how a wiki using the CC licence is going to stop people from importing wiki-text from another wiki that is using the GFDL licence. If someone sees that two wikis are on Wikia, they could easily see the content as fair game for copying and pasting. David Shepheard 23:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

PvXwiki

Hey, I'm from PvXwiki. We are currently under the CC-BY-SA-NC 2.5 license. I've read above and you have mentioned that no changes will be made to wiki's under the Creative commons license, but does that hold true if we're using the non-commercial form? Phenaxkian 10:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There will be no changes at all to PvX. Only wikis which are currently GFDL will be changed. Angela (talk) 13:28, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Pirates Online says AYE!

I'll be honest, I don't know exactly any potential downsides of this change to POTCO Wikia and if there's are not any major ones - I don't think we'll have any issues.

But, if anyone here can see a major foreseeable problem for Wikia folk, please hit me up with a message.

--ElizaCreststeel 13:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Patch needed for CC content search compatibility

I did a bit of research on the CC content searches mentioned above. You might want to consider the patch I made for this bug to ensure that Wikia content actually shows up, as the license link does not currently have a tag indicating that it refers to a license. --GreenReaper^(talk) 16:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

We currently use link rel="copyright" in the header. Do you know if rel="license" can be used there as well or whether it needs to be attached to a link? It's odd that the search engines don't bother looking at rel="copyright". Angela (talk) 04:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

What is the Forgotten Realms Wiki doing?

There are a several Dungeons and Dragons based wikis on Wikia. They all have different goals, but because they have similar content, it is possible for wikis to share things like templates.

I've been invited (by someone on the Forgotten Realms Wiki staff) to use some of their templates. Obviously, I won't be able to do that if they go with one licence and my wiki (Spelljammer Wiki) goes with another licence.

I personally think the CC licence is a much better licence than the GDFL, but as far as I can see there has not been much (if any) effort to organise admins of similar wikis (like all the D&D wikis) together to form a working group that can vote on which licence is best for the common good. I think this is something the community (rather than Wikia) should have done, but with just 24 hours left, I can't see we have time for it.

So as the Forgotten Realms Wiki is the biggest D&D related wiki I know of. I'll just say that I'd like Spelljammer Wiki to do the same thing as Forgotten Realms Wiki. David Shepheard 18:29, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I expect that both Forgotten Realms and Spelljammer wikis will switch. Angela (talk) 04:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

RPG rules licences (e.g. the OGL and Traveller licence)

This does not apply to my own wiki (which is a fluff wiki that does not contain 'game rules'), but there are a lot of people out there who want to make RPG content that is based on a commercially licenced system. For example, anything based on Wizard of the Coast's SRD, needs to be licenced under the OGL and anything based on Mongoose's open Traveller content needs to be licenced under Mongoose's licence. From what I can see Pathfinder Wiki is going beyond the authority of the OGL and needs to use the OGL and Pathfinder's licence. How easy is it for a specific page to be 'opted out' of the CC licence and switched over to one of these specialist licences? Is this something that is possible, or do authors need to create a box around content and add the other licence to that box? David Shepheard 19:59, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The Traveller wiki is currently under the GFDL (soon CC-SA) license in conjunction with FFE Fair Use license (which is part of the Mongoose Developer Package). The FFE fair use license requires non-commercial use of the material only. The Mongoose OGL applies to their game rules only and we don't allow posting of game rules or rule changes (per request from Marc Miller at FFE).

Just to be clear we include a Sources Template on each page with a more explicit copyright. We also do it because it's important to our users to be able to find the originals. I've seen a similar template box used for pages or sections with the WOTC OGL content on other wikis. Tjoneslo 20:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on how the Traveller Wiki deals with this. I think it is very sensible way to do things (both from the Traveller Wiki side and the Mongoose side). I'm not convinced the same thing would be so easy for the OGL, as I think that section 2 of the OGL may prevent the use of OGC on a page that has another licence on it, but I suppose that a template could say that the CC licence does not apply to the content on the page. David Shepheard 21:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

fr.guildwars.wikia

As i stated elsewhere, fr.guildwars need to stay on the same license than the official wiki. So, i've posted over there to ask them if they are really staying in GFDL. But already, i was pretty sure they didn't intended to switch. Anet seems to think that only the GFDL permit them to use the wiki the way they want (with in-game intégration). — TulipVorlax 02:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

CC is an easier to use license, so I expect they'd have an easier time using it in-game if they switched from GFDL. They need to make their decision before August as it's not possible to switch after that. Angela (talk) 04:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)