Free documentation licenses

Jimmy Wales jwales at aristotle.bomis.com
Mon Nov 27 17:56:36 UTC 2000


David Johnson wrote:
> The Nupedia license is also unacceptable for various 
> reasons.

I'd be curious to hear what problems the Nupedia license has for your
project.

As a side note, we are (at the suggestion of RMS) re-considering the
GFDL for Nupedia.  One major advatage that using a FSF-sponsored license
can give you is "open source credibility".  We have found that many
people are suspicious that people in the open content movement are just
trying to ride on the prestige of open source, and that people fear that
the content isn't _really_ open.  Using a Gnu license lets people know
that we are serious.

Also, although I dismissed the GFDL on a first reading as "too much",
upon a second reading, I realized that the "invariant sections" stuff
is exactly what we wanted, in terms of implementing an atttribution
requirement.

Still, I liked the original Nupedia license, and we are going slow
in our reconsideration.

--Jimbo



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