User talk:Munchkinguy

You did the Lulu experiment? Cool, and let's talk about how to do this before resuming it... --Jimbo Wales 12:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Print Version of Wikibooks (specifically Wikijunior) content
I mentioned that you offered for sale from Lulu Press content from the Wikijunior project, and specifically for the Wikijunior Big Cats book.

I want to add that I want to thank you for doing this, and that in no way do I think you steped out of line by doing this. In fact, what you did was to force the issue and make people on the WMF board take notice and try to come up with a solution to get this sort of task accomplished.

Jimbo obviously wants to find out why you did this, but this is something that eventually needs to happen.

Know that I am here to defend your actions, and I'm not too thrilled that the link to Lulu Press was removed, and I am even more upset that Jimbo asked Lulu Press to kill the book completely. That is uncalled for, especially since these PDF versions have been available on Wikibooks for some time and it is reasonable to be able to sell content like this without direct permission of the WMF.

You have not violated any major copyright law in any way, and the only real issue is over the use of trademarks. At least this issue is being raised and some people are taking notice. --Rob Horning 14:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW, I may be partially responsible for some of the mess you are currently in (and it really isn't that bad). I admit to adding the WMF as a copyright claimant, and I still havn't had too much direction here.  I guess if you had to list authors, you need to list the contributors who appear on the history pages.
 * I'm thinking of trying to write a 'bot that would scrape from the history links to each page to be able to compile at least an edit count of what each editor has added to each page. In theory because of how the edit history is stored, it is even possible to count each word or even each letter that was entered on a given page to compare the amount of work that was done, although that would be an incredible machine-intensive algorithm.  The whole point of doing that would be to give top billing to the most prolific author and put those authors who did but one edit on the very bottom of a long list of authors.  Right now all the GFDL says is that you have to give credit to merely a random 5 authors who contributed, which can even include anonymous authors.
 * At least you can think about how this would work out in the future, and again thanks for your effort here. --Rob Horning 02:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Luckily, a similar tool already exists at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tim/cgi-bin/contribution-counter, written by w:User:TDS. --hagindaz 03:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If you plan on making changes for copyright attirbution, please try to add some of the top contributors instead of the Wikimedia Foundation. Apparently the WMF wants to disclaim all copyright credit to any Wikimedia project materials. I think that is not a good direction to proceed as it implies the WMF can't enforce the GFDL either. It is interesting that the Free Software Foundation encourages explicit granting of copyright to them for precisely the reason that they can enforce copyleft on GNU project copyright violations. I've expressed concern about this in the past, and it has fallen on deaf ears. I think the liability issues are way overstated, but that isn't my call. --Rob Horning 20:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as how to proceed with "approval", you will have to deal with Jimbo on this one. I'm just suggesting that it is the issue with using the Wikimedia Foundation name that seemed to have been a hot button, and I'm not really sure if you were wrong here anyway.  Of you can take it up with Lulu Press.  I'm just trying to give some advise and trying to synthisis what was said on Foundation-l.  --Rob Horning 21:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Resolving Legal Issues
I'm sort of curious about what the legal objections were that Brad had and how you resolved them. This is (unfortunately) a precedent setting situation here, and I'm sort of surprised that the situation isn't being handled in a more public manner, but that is I guess Brad's style. If you can help us with any tips in the future, it would be appreciated. --Rob Horning 20:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding the use of Wikijunior Big Cats, I would have to point to w:Wikipedia:Verbatim copying which implies that not only can you use the Wikijunior name, but you must use the given title of the book. I guess Brad is expecting us to hire our own lawyers and try to divine his and the WMF thoughts on this topic, especially since he hasn't explicitly asked us to do one thing or the other.  Of course in Brad's defense, it is damned if he does or doesn't with a formal proclamation on this point and either answer has legal implications.  Lawyers don't like to be nailed in a corner where they have to give a difinitive legal answer.  I would suggest you keep the name Wikijunior but dump the WMF as a copyright claimant, however my advise is only worth the $0.02 (canadian) that I'm giving to you.  --Rob Horning 21:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Publication of the Month
Your name seems to be a popular one in discussing printable versions of wikibooks. There was a pretty lengthy-discussion at the staff lounge, and the result so far has been to create this page: Publication of the Month. The idea will be to have a single book every month (or perhaps every several months) which we will focus on, proofread, typeset, and prepare for physical publication. This project is currently in a very early state, and we would like to get more feedback on it. Please stop by, and give your comments/suggestions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)