User talk:JBogdan

All content on wikibooks is licensed under the GFDL. This is expressly stated on the "edit" screen, and clicking the "save page" button shows acceptance of that license. Now, I see that you have specifically used the User PD template on your user page, so all contributions by you are released into the public domain. However, contributions by other users may not be. I don't think there is any way to expressly state that an entire book will be released under a different license, because the contributions of other editors might not be under other licenses. If you do not like the GDFL for whatever reason, you may be forced to contribute to another website. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You can, if you want, try to make a banner that says your book is to be licensed under a different license. I am not particularly knowledgable in this subject, so you you want to try something like this, I would ask User:Robert Horning, because he knows this topic pretty well. What are your reasons, if i may ask, for your insistance that your book not be released under the GFDL? It's not a particularly restrictive license. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The template looks alright to me. I worry that either a) this warning will be meaningless when considering that all contributions here are already licensed under the GFDL, b) that users who are confused by the licensing issues won't contribute to your book, and c) that this book won't be eligible for some of the opportunities that are open to books, including WB:COTM, WB:BOTM, and new "Publication of the month" initiatives (that work to typeset, publish, and distribute completed wikibooks). Also, if your book is suffering from these handicaps, it provides incentives for other people to create other books, on the same topic, that are simply released under the GFDL. Such difficulties of licensing, and forking of content could lead for your book to be deleted in the future. Perhaps this is the "worst case" scenario, but i don't think it is impossible. You might want to bring the issue up at staff lounge before you do anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Using Alternative licenses
I have seen what you are trying to suggest. As far as "freedom" is concerned, I am not completely sure where you are coming from, but I understand those who are critics of the Free Software Foundation and their licensing practices. There are a few things you can do to content that is here on Wikibooks, but I must emphasis that as User:Whiteknight pointed out, there is nothing preventing individuals here from making changes that only use the GFDL as the licensing arrangement.

Every contribution to Wikibooks must be available to anybody who wants to used Wikibooks content under the GFDL. If you use a license that is incompatable with the GFDL, it makes all content thus contributed no longer available under compatable terms with any other content and must be deleted as a copyright violation. This is also being done to simplify our lives here on Wikibooks, as trying to work with multiple licenses would make life so complicated for Wikibooks contributors that it would hardly be worth even adding new content.

That said, you have a few options, keeping in mind that you as a contributor retain copyright to all content that you are creating here:


 * Dual-license all of your personal contributions. This does not have to be just public domain license (as you have done), but it can be with any other content license, including and not even limted to the Microsoft End-User Agreement License.  I'm not kidding here either.  That is your option on how you would like to see this used.  But it must be "dual-licensed" where one of the licenses that can be used for redistrubtion must include the GFDL.
 * Create the content off-line first. Doing this means that Wikibooks only has the latest version of whatever you were writing.  It kills the idea of collaborative writing, but even being a Wiki does not necessarily require that the content always be edited in such a manner.  You could write or create whatever you wanted either on a word-processor or on a version of MediaWiki running on your home computer.  When you think the content is "ready for publication" you can then post it on Wikibooks.  BTW, there are several software development groups that do exactly this with GPL'd computer software, where they always release their "previous" version under the GPL but they keep the most recent version for paying customers and a propritary license.  If somebody is adding new content to whatever document you have written in this manner, that would be considered a fork, and you would have to deal with the consequence of forking in a significant way.
 * Move the content to a completely different Wiki. I know this sounds harsh, but if you don't like the terms of the GFDL, perhaps Wikibooks and other Wikimedia projects is not the place to publish it.  There are other Wikis that use licensing under very different terms, and it seems as though the Creative Commons licenses are quite common, perhaps even more common than those with terms under the GFDL.  You might want to look at http://www.wikia.com/ for some other projects, some of which use the Creative Commons licensing.

All this said, perhaps it might be possible to try and create a Wikibook that uses a specific alternative license in a dual-licensing format (together with the GFDL). There have been attempts to do that in the past, but the problem I see is one of legal enforcement. Right now, the "standard disclaimer" on Wikibooks is that anything you add is licensed under the GFDL. You could put some disclaimers on each page of the Wikibook that it is available under some alternative license, but the real question comes to if any contributions by those who don't want to have it available under those terms should be deleted, and what the status of multiple users doing this would be. It really opens a Pandora's box of legal troubles that are better left alone, but if you want to be bold and see where that might lead, go ahead and try. Just be aware that over the long term the content may simply revert to being just GFDL compatable if the other major contributors aren't as keen to keep the second license. Those that want to ignore the GFDL will simply see the content deleted from Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 16:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)