[Fedora-legal-list] Fedora content downstream at Wikipedia

[Richard Fontana]

On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:28:54 -0800
Luis Villa <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com>
> wrote:
> > But there is an additional clause in contributing content to
> > Wikipedia, that it be contributed under the GFDL:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright#Contributors.27_rights_and_obligations
> >
> >  If you contribute text directly to Wikipedia, you thereby license
> > it to the public for reuse under CC-BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned,
> > with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).
> 
> "If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you
> have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available
> under terms that are compatible with the CC-BY-SA license. ***You do
> not need to ensure or guarantee that the imported text is available
> under the GNU Free Documentation License, unless you are its sole
> author.***"
> 
> ***emphasis mine
> 
> That's the second paragraph of your own link... given that the content
> is already CC-BY-SA, it should just be importable straight into
> wikipedia (doesn't need to be GFDL), unless I'm missing something?
> 
> Or to put it more clearly:
> * it is my understanding that all content in the fedora wiki is
> CC-BY-SA
> * it is my understanding that wikipedia can accept all CC-BY-SA
> content. (GFDL is no longer required.)
> 
> therefore:
> * it is my understanding that all content in the fedora wiki can be
> exported over to wikipedia.
> 
> Quite possibly I'm wrong on all of these; it is late and I am tired :)
 
I think Luis is correct, but in any event, to the extent that Red Hat
is the CC-BY-SA licensor here (by virtue of the Fedora CLA, and/or of
the contributions by Red Hat employees qua Red Hat employees), and
unless there are obligations to other licensors/copyright holders that
would prevent this (which seems not to be the case here), and unless
non-Red-Hat contributors do not object as to their
copyrightable contributions, such content is also available under the
much-maligned GFDL. That can be regarded as a general policy. 

 - RF


-- 
Richard E. Fontana
Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.