Talk:Wikinews/License straw poll

Dual option: FDL and CC-by-sa

The ability to use Wiknews content to update Wikipedia articles is more important than using Wikipedia content in Wikinews articles (quoting and/or framing of Wikipedia content should be enough), IMO. Wikipedia should concentrate on background, giving Wikinews the ability to concentrate on the news.

That said I don't think we should abandon copyleft for any project. Thus I support dual-licensing under CC-by-sa and FDL for Wikinews. The FDL is simply impractical to use in a print publication like a newspaper since it would require too much of third parties (like printing the whole license in the paper!). They could use the cc-by-sa which basicly requires a by-line and mention of the license (which would affect any improvements they made to the article as well). The FDL part is just to be one-way compatible with other Wikimedia projects.

But the cost to third parties using Wikimedia content should continue to be the passing on of the same freedoms we give them to others that use their derivative works. This ensures positive feedback.

Yes it is coercion, but it is just asking others to be as nice as we have been to them. I don't think that is too much to ask for. All PD and attribution-only does is give proprietary content providers a free lunch. Copyleft helps to change the world by making sure that those who use it share their improvements.

--Daniel Mayer 17:12, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

bindig decision?

Why is this straw poll non-binding? Who does make the bindig decision? Why not add an amendment to the license(s) to allow changing the license(s) by the wikimedia/wikinews community in a later poll? Then there must not be a final decision now. The license(s) could be changed, when wikinews grows, the situation changes or new arguments (or license(s)) come up.

Here are my gueses. A poll is usually non-binding partly because it is not announced well, or, in case of an issue that has multi-lingual, project wide consequences, there is no translation offered. There hasn't been a substantial discussion of pros& cons of different options, either.

We can possibly decide our license choices temporarily as you suggest. Technically, we are not allowed to modify licenses (or, when we change a license term, it becomes a different license). Yet we can kind of introduce a meta-license and say that choice of licenses may change within certain range and following a certain procedure. Tomos 23:09, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)