Talk:Scratch/Content License

The cc-by-sa licensing is unacceptable, as there is no reliable way to ensure contributors other that Rob have agreed to this. I'm going to remove it in one week unless there are objections with convincing reasoning. Rob's contributions of course remain dual-licensed; derivatives of his contributions on Wikibooks are GFDL-only (unless otherwise stated). &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 01:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * First of all, under what possible authority do you have to "remove this" page or this licensing agreement from this wikibook? If you look very carefully at the dates, this license term of being dual licensed was initiated immediately at the beginning when this wikibook was created, and I tried to make it abundantly clear that all of the pages were dual-licensed by anybody who was contributing to this.


 * Yeah, I'll admit that this is an experiment in dual-licensing content, but I strongly disagree with your interpretation of what could or could not happen on Wikibooks. I guess I do consider this to be "an objection"


 * Please read the rationale for why I am asking for this content to be dual-licensed... well above and beyond "just because". This is deliberately being written explicitly to be compatible with the other Scratch related documentation and content... which BTW is exclusively being distributed under the terms of CC-by-SA.


 * I have asked for legitimate discussion about this matter by any potential contributors to this project, but threats of deletion of the content doesn't seem like a good way to start that sort of discussion.


 * I also don't understand for the life of me why a wikibook can't be dual-licensed, but that is another discussion for another page and forum. Please don't make this book the fall guy for such a drastic change of project policy until all of the issues are vetted.  --Rob Horning (talk) 03:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't see anyone who wants to delete content. I agree you have a good reason for doing so - that's not my issue. I simply fail to see how the book is actually dual licensed at this point - there are contributors which have not agreed to the second license. Unless you can show some proof they have done so, they haven't. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 12:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The "proof" that I'm using in terms of suggesting that this book is still dual-licensed is two fold:
 * All additions to this book by other authors are essentially minor and trivial edits (weak proof, but it is some sort of "proof"). None of them would qualify as a significant author/contributor under the terms of the GFDL, but that is something up for debate.  I'm not trying to "own" this book, but I am pointing out that nobody else has contributed yet.  If/when somebody else does in a meaningful way, it can be something where other stake holders can help address/sort out what the situation will be.
 * The "dual license" nature of the wikibook has been made apparent on nearly every page of this book, with disclaimers to that effect on every page. IMHO, if dual-licensed content is to be permitted on Wikibooks, it is precisely in this manner that it should happen.  The very fact this license page even exists should speak volumes for at least the intent to keep and maintain this dual-license situation.
 * All of this will be moot if the Free Software Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation seem to work out a compromise license that would allow GFDL'd content to become CC-by-SA (or similar licensed) content. I have doubts about that happening in spite of folks like Mike Godwin and nearly the whole of the WMF board trying to make it happen, but that is my own political opinion on that topic.
 * By deleting this page (the license page), it is in effect forcing this dual-license nature of this particular wikibook to become GFDL-only. I don't want to involve a bunch of lawyers into this game, and I'm not going to try and disrupt Wikibooks by doing so.  But what I see here is an attempt to interpret the law according to a certain point of view when such a POV isn't necessarily universal nor is there legal precedence to justify such a viewpoint either.  As far as I know, the GFDL itself hasn't been tested in court, much less any sort of dual-licensing efforts on wikis where some "downstream user" is attempting to act under the terms of the 2nd license when the first license was clearly marked as it is here on Wikibooks.
 * For me, this is really an issue of freedom. I added this content under a dual-license to give the freedom for those who want to use the contents of this book jointly with the software that it is describing the opportunity to not have to worry about licenses.  Life is so complicated as it is that having to deal with the minutae of content licensing should be the last thing somebody using this wikibook should have to worry about.  If they copy some examples from this wikibook and blend them into Scratch with some content from the main MIT-Scratch website, they shouldn't have to be worrying about license incompatibility.  I'm also hoping (but not counting on) the folks at MIT using Wikibooks as a place they can encourage user participation of documentation about the project.  --Rob Horning (talk) 10:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)