Documentation License

[ChO₂]

Dear List,

I have noticed that there is no indication on the wiki what licensing
terms applies to the FAQ and other documentation pages on the wiki and I
assume that no thought was given to this. I think that all documentation
on the wiki should be made free. (For the reasons why, read
http://www.gnu.org/doc/fsfs-ii-2.pdf , pages 61 to 64.)
While it would be easy to make any new wiki page subject to GNU FDL,
anything that is already there as of now may cause license problems:

- Usually, we can assume that everybody who has contributed to a wiki
page has thereby given permission to redistribute the modified page and
to allow for subsequent changes. However, does this mean that the wiki
page can be made a FDLed work? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
- Could we just say "this wiki is now under GNU FDL" without caring
about copyright? Would anybody who has contributed to the FAQ sue IMF or
anyone else for FDLing a wiki page without permission?
- If neccessary, it would be feasible to ask everybody who has
contributed to the wiki by now for permission to relicense their work
under GNU FDL because Trac knows all email addresses. However, there
might be some old stuff from before the name change from Gaim to Pidgin
and some people might not reply to such a request or maybe someone is
already dead... In this case, it might be necessary to single out any
parts which are not FDL-compatible and remove these. However, I don't
know whether removing parts of a work or reverting changes does actually
help in this case. I don't know either whether a long FAQ can be
considered several seperate works or whether it is only to be regarded
as one work.

Any thoughts on this?

Regards,
ChO2

E-Mail / Jabber: chemistrydioxide at quantentunnel.de