Since Robert raised the question where we stand and what our timeline looks like, I want to briefly recap:
* Because the attribution issue is quite divisive, I want us to dedicate some more time to reconsidering and revising our approach. * I'm developing a simple LimeSurvey-based survey to get a feel on prevalent opinions regarding some of the attribution-relevant questions from a sample of contributors. * Our timeline will need to be pushed forward a bit, in part because of this, but also for a number of other unrelated reasons. That said, we want to move forward fairly aggressively given the constraints of the re-licensing clause. I think it's important to note that most other aspects of the proposed re-licensing have turned out to be remarkably uncontroversial. I'm very pleased that we've found so much common ground already. Even on the attribution question, it seems that there is wide agreement that for online re-use, hyperlinks to a page history or author credit page are an appropriate mechanism for attribution. It's sensible to me, and apparently most people, that other people's web use should be treated very similarly to our own. The fundamentally divisive question is whether principles of web use can be applied to some of the other real world use scenarios we've encountered: DVD, print, spoken versions, etc. Our established practices don't give us a huge amount of guidance in that matter, though many past and present GFDL-based offline uses support the case for stronger attribution, and when this hasn't been granted (as in the case of the SOS Children's DVD), it turned out to be controversial. Clearly, many people feel that these media lack the immediacy of access to authorship information that the web medium provides. An important counterpoint is that these media are among the ones which are the most important to reach disadvantaged communities - people without Internet access, blind users, etc. - and that any onerous requirements are arguably going to diminish our ability to spread free knowledge. So, there are moral arguments on both sides. Moreover, as I've noted, many names only really have meaning in the context of web presence in the first place. A compromise could acknowledge the principle that attribution should never be unreasonably onerous explicitly (a principle which, as Geni has pointed out, is arguably already encoded in the CC-BY-SA license's "reasonable to the medium or means" provision), commit us to work together to provide attribution records of manageable length using smart algorithms as well as documenting minimally complex attribution implementations, and permit by-URL attribution in circumstances where we don't have a better answer yet. I worry, in this scenario, about instruction and complexity creep over time, so the fundamental principles of simplicity would need to be articulated well. And I want to make sure that we don't embark on a compromise which achieves nothing: that the vocal minority who feel very strongly about attribution-by-name under all circumstances will continue to object, that we will increase complexity for re-users, and that we will not actually persuade anyone to support the approach who wouldn't otherwise do so. So, getting some more data on that question -- is a compromise necessary and possible -- should IMO be the next steps, after which we may revise our proposed attribution terms further. I hope that we'll be able get some first survey data this week, and move quickly after that. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
