WikiLicensing

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 * '''Contributors''': MatthewEast, HenrikOmma, MatthewPaulThomas, MattWilkie  * '''Contributors''': MatthewEast, HenrikOmma, MatthewPaulThomas, CommunityCouncil
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The progress of the better-wiki-docs spec provides a good occasion to reevaluate the licensing of "documentation" that appears on the Ubuntu wiki. There is currently no licensing policy expressed on the wiki and this has caused confusion. This spec attempts to develop a licensing policy which ensures that material contributed to wiki pages can be used freely in Ubuntu Official Documentation, and elsewhere, without any copyright restrictions. It achieves this by ensuring that the material on the wiki is in the public domain. There is currently no licensing policy expressed on the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community documentation wiki] and this has caused confusion about whether material can be copied into it and from it. This spec attempts to develop a licensing policy for the documentation wiki.
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There is confusion about whether material can or cannot be copied (for example into official Ubuntu documentation released in the distribution). Arguably[[FootNote(It might be said that people who post on the wiki can be taken to have impliedly waived their intellectual property rights in the material or alternatively have granted a licence to use the material freely by their conduct of posting to such a collaborative medium as a "wiki", but we don't want to have to get into these sort of arguments!)]], it can be, but "arguably" is not good enough, we need clarity, for the Documentation Team, for the contributors and for the users. There is confusion about whether material can or cannot be copied (for example into official Ubuntu documentation released in the distribution). The current copyright notice states that the copyright belongs to Canonical. However given that power of the wiki for developing community contributed documentation, it is necessary for the material to be freely licensed, for use in the system documentation and elsewhere.
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There is therefore a need to avoid [http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2005-November/004222.html this sort of confusion] and establish a licensing policy which enables material posted on the wiki to be freely modified and redistributed to reflect the fact that the wiki is a collaborative effort by all the community. Licensing the material on the wiki under a free license will also mean that it will become possible to copy material from other free sources, such as the Ubuntu forums, the Official Ubuntu Book, and the system documentation. Encouraging the free exchange of material between the documentation wiki and the system documentation will allow the two to draw closer together, which is ultimately the aim of the documentation team in order to permit easier access to contribution.
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Users should not be allowed to post under other licences for two reasons:
 0. the wiki should be a collaborative effort, users who wish to retain copyright are free to publish material on their own sites;
 0. it would be difficult to implement a system where copyrighted material is conveniently locked down to prevent editing by others.		 Further, there are reasons of principle to implement such a policy:
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A related but in reality discrete issue is whether the wiki documentation should discourage author attribution. Documentation is generally not helped by having the author's name on the top, which can in fact be distracting. On the wiki, it can also deter others from contributing to a page. Where others have contributed, it is impossible to keep track of all the contributors in a long list of authors. For these reasons we have concluded that the general policy should be against author attribution on the pages.  a. Ubuntu is an operating system promoting free software, and has promoted a book releasing documentation under a free license.
 a. The very nature of a wiki is that it should be a collaborative effort which encourages the free use of information.
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 * Make the material on the wiki available in the public domain. Note that public domain is not legally possible in all countries. For this reason a formulation [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-self like this] will be necessary.
 * Make the user who contributes material to the wiki aware of this fact.		 === Choice of License ===

 * It was originally planned to put material on the wiki into the public domain. However, after extremely wide consultation with the community on this issue, many users objected that they would be unhappy with material contributed by them being used in non-free derivative works. As a result it seems clear that a free sharealike license should be used.
 * The [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC-By-SA license] is a good choice, for many reasons:
  * It is used by the system documentation,
  * It is used by the Ubuntu forums,
  * It is used by the Official Ubuntu Book,
  * It is a popular and well known license.

=== Communication ===

 * The copyright notice on the wiki states that the material is copyright of Canonical. As a result, relicensing the material under a free license is within the power of Canonical - however, we also want to try and reach out to as much of the community as possible to justify and communicate the change of license.
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 * Prepare for the transition by attempting to obtain the consent of persons who have posted material on the wiki. This will be done as follows: an email will be prepared [:/Email:here] to explain the reasons behind the transition, and to encourage any users who disagree to come forward to discuss and resolve any potential problems. This email will be sent to those users who have posted to the wiki since it has been running on moin (a script will be necessary to get a list of those users with their email addresses from the Launchpad authentication and wiki databases). The email should also be sent to the main ubuntu mailing lists, and in general the information should be distributed widely. Then, after a reasonable period, the following things will be done:  * An email will be prepared [:/Email:here] to explain the reasons behind the transition, and to encourage any users who disagree to come forward to discuss and resolve any potential problems. This email will be sent to those users who have posted to the wiki since it has been running on moin (a script will be necessary to get a list of those users with their email addresses from the Launchpad authentication and wiki databases). The email should also be sent to the main ubuntu mailing lists, and in general the information should be distributed widely. Then, after a reasonable period, the following things will be done:
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 * Some Moin code will be added to make it clear that when creating, editing and/or saving a page the user knows that the material added is put into the public domain, by displaying a message similar or identical to this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-self  * Some Moin code will be added to make it clear that when creating, editing and/or saving a page the user knows that the material added is released under the CC-By-SA license.
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None :) Should this specification apply to the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community documentation wiki] only, or to the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ main Ubuntu wiki] as well?
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== Author Credits ==
On the discrete but closely related issue of keeping track of authors' contributions it is possible in wiki to retain credits along with a specific record of their contributions. There is code too, though not for moin. Perhaps it could be adapted, see http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/ContributorsPlugin
This plugin works relatively well for balancing the need to keep the main body of text unlittered with names without relegating them to a backwater and easily forgotten or overlooked.

''Here's a perfect example of being overlooked: I neglected to add my name to the contributors list at the top of the page on the last edit, so needed to add another edit to change it... Bookkeeping like this is the kind of thing which is better tracked in code and not left to the authors. --MW :)''

Feel free to discuss this page on the [http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc Documentation Team mailing list] or at the bottom of the page.

Summary

There is currently no licensing policy expressed on the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community documentation wiki] and this has caused confusion about whether material can be copied into it and from it. This spec attempts to develop a licensing policy for the documentation wiki.

Rationale

The wiki does not currently contain any express definition of licensing policy. This means:

There is confusion about whether material can or cannot be copied (for example into official Ubuntu documentation released in the distribution). The current copyright notice states that the copyright belongs to Canonical. However given that power of the wiki for developing community contributed documentation, it is necessary for the material to be freely licensed, for use in the system documentation and elsewhere.

Licensing the material on the wiki under a free license will also mean that it will become possible to copy material from other free sources, such as the Ubuntu forums, the Official Ubuntu Book, and the system documentation. Encouraging the free exchange of material between the documentation wiki and the system documentation will allow the two to draw closer together, which is ultimately the aim of the documentation team in order to permit easier access to contribution.

Further, there are reasons of principle to implement such a policy:

  1. Ubuntu is an operating system promoting free software, and has promoted a book releasing documentation under a free license.
  2. The very nature of a wiki is that it should be a collaborative effort which encourages the free use of information.

Use cases

  • Chiara works on the [http://doc.ubuntu.com Ubuntu Documentation Team]. She is writing a section of the [:DesktopGuide:Ubuntu Desktop Starter Guide] about multimedia support. She would like to use the material from the wiki page MultimediaApplications, but is unsure of whether she will be breaching copyright by doing so.

  • Anthony wants to work on the Ubuntu Wiki by contributing a guide, but is only prepared to do so on the basis that he retains copyright in the work and he wishes to find out whether this is possible on the Ubuntu wiki.

Design

Choice of License

  • It was originally planned to put material on the wiki into the public domain. However, after extremely wide consultation with the community on this issue, many users objected that they would be unhappy with material contributed by them being used in non-free derivative works. As a result it seems clear that a free sharealike license should be used.

  • The [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC-By-SA license] is a good choice, for many reasons:

    • It is used by the system documentation,
    • It is used by the Ubuntu forums,
    • It is used by the Official Ubuntu Book,
    • It is a popular and well known license.

Communication

  • The copyright notice on the wiki states that the material is copyright of Canonical. As a result, relicensing the material under a free license is within the power of Canonical - however, we also want to try and reach out to as much of the community as possible to justify and communicate the change of license.

Implementation

  • An email will be prepared [:/Email:here] to explain the reasons behind the transition, and to encourage any users who disagree to come forward to discuss and resolve any potential problems. This email will be sent to those users who have posted to the wiki since it has been running on moin (a script will be necessary to get a list of those users with their email addresses from the Launchpad authentication and wiki databases). The email should also be sent to the main ubuntu mailing lists, and in general the information should be distributed widely. Then, after a reasonable period, the following things will be done:

  • Details of the license will be put on a prominently linked wiki page, or in the footer.
  • Some Moin code will be added to make it clear that when creating, editing and/or saving a page the user knows that the material added is released under the CC-By-SA license.

Outstanding issues

Should this specification apply to the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community documentation wiki] only, or to the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ main Ubuntu wiki] as well?

Discussion

CategorySpec

WikiLicensing (last edited 2009-08-29 14:02:31 by 79-72-96-222)