MediaWiki talk:Licenses

Topic
I don't know, I think people should be allowed to choose how they want to licence there image. None of these affect their use on RationalWiki do they? 11:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They do, because they're not compatible with cc-by-sa. I think we should remove GFDL too, since it is not compatible either. If people want to license their image under a different license they can, but by omitting them from the drop down we are influencing the decision in favor of cc-by-sa-3.0, which is what we want. Plus too many choices increases the likelihood of a bad choice, i.e. if someone doesn't know what all these licenses are, they might just select one that sounds good, without knowing that it creates problems. (e.g. they might select non-commercial, thinking it is a good thing, when in fact it is not) -- Nx  / talk 12:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * What about the no derivatives and no commercial cc-by 3.0, surly they are compatible with our licensing? 12:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, they're not. -- Nx  / talk 12:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * How are they not? 12:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They do not allow commercial reuse/modification. -- Nx  / talk 12:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So when are we going to commercialise RationalWiki? It seems to me perfectly reasonable for people to be able to say they don't want anyone modifying their work. 12:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that is incompatible with the site license. Similarly, you can't write an RW article and say that you don't want anyone modifying it. Images are a bit different though, since other licenses are allowed. But the ones that are compatible with the site license are preferred. -- Nx  / talk 12:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So if images are different, where it is preferred but not mandatory, why not give people the choice? Wasn't that why the drop down menu was created, so people could choose their own licensing easily? 12:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Because too much choice is bad. If you are uploading your own image for the purposes of using it in a RationalWiki article, and you don't want it "to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." -- Nx  / talk 12:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * More choice is a good thing. If people have more control over their images they maybe more willing to submit them. "to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." only applies to text, you skipped the first bit "If you do not want your writing...". 12:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, the purpose of the dropdown is so that people start putting licenses on stuff they upload, and there are more choices for existing works that are not your own. -- Nx  / talk 12:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You have the same choices, nay rights, as everyone else that creates images. 12:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, you have. But if you don't want to release it under cc-by-sa-3.0, then we can't use it. At least in the case of text that is true. Why should it not apply to images as well? Of course our image copyright policy is a bit loose, but if you are creating an image for the purpose of using it in an RW article, why would you want to license it under anything other than cc-by-sa-3.0? What's the difference between image and text in that case? -- Nx  / talk 13:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Because someone might not want people making derivatives of their work or using it for commercial purposes. You have already said that any CC 3.0 can be used on RationalWiki, why not give people a choice with a little note next to CC-by-sa 3.0 that say preferred? 13:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "You have already said that any CC 3.0 can be used on RationalWiki" I have? Only Cc-by-sa and Cc-by are compatible. Why we allow others is because we are not anal-retentive about image copyrights like Wikipedia. Take a look at where wp:Template:cc-by-nc redirects to at WP. --  Nx  / talk 13:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, what if someone doesn't want people making derivatives of their textual work? -- Nx  / talk 13:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) Red herring, we are discussing images, please stay on topic. 13:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does not want non-commercial because it is planning on cashing in on its contributors free work. I can't see why people should not be given all the Creative Commons options that are compatible with RationalWiki, we are non-commercial and we won't edit our pictures if you don't want us too. 13:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia can't cash in on the free work done by others precisely because of cc-by-sa. If they were to, say, release a DVD containing some of the articles and ask a lot of money for it, why would anyone buy it, when the same thing is available on the net for free? And any additions they make must also be released, so there would be no extra value in the commercial version. That is why strong copyleft is a good thing. Weak copyleft (cc-by) would allow someone to take a free work, add something to it, and then not give back and cash in on the free works of others. This is what happened for example to Wine (with Transgaming Cedega), and this is why Microsoft could borrow the BSD networking stack for Windows. -- Nx  / talk 13:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * But people are given all the CC options that are compatible. -- Nx  / talk 13:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

<--I still can't see how non-commercial and no derivatives is not compatible. 13:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Cc-by-sa requires that all derivative works be licensed under the same license (one that allows commercial use). Cc-by-nc does not allow commercial use. Combine the two, and you've got a contradiction: on one hand, the combined work would have to allow commercial works because of cc-by-sa, on the other hand it must not be used commercially because of cc-by-nc. Same goes for noderivs. (And an nd image couldn't be used in an article if the article is defined as derivative, but I'm not sure about that) -- Nx  / talk 13:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Is it written down in stone somewhere that every single thing on this website has to be CC-by-sa 3.0? As far as I can tell it is only the text that comes under that licence. If everything had to be CC-by-sa 3.0 then Trent would have to licence the logo as such as well. As far as I am aware the reason we want free licence picture is because we want to be able to use them, if other people can not use them or alter them it is of no concern to us. 13:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The logo is a different thing because it is not a part of our articles.
 * If it is nc or nd we can't use it, at least not fully. We can't modify it. We can't sell a DVD version of RationalWiki (highly hypothetical situation here), even if it is only sold at material cost.
 * Also, it's a bit selfish, given the amount of work we use from Commons.
 * And my question is relevant: what is the difference between images and text? Why don't we license userpages and essays as cc-by-nc-nd for example? -- Nx  / talk 13:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * But the logo is used in templates which are CC-by-sa 3.0 are they not? We can't modify or sell fair use images but they are still permissible on the site in certain circumstances. Same goes for images that already no derivative or non-commercial. Selfish maybe, but we are not responsible for how people want to licence their work, why should we coerce them into our choice. In principle there is no reason we couldn't, in practice it might be a lot harder seeing as though you are basically agreeing to CC-by-sa 3.0 by typing into the window. 13:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's used in a bunch of templates, but it can easily be stripped out and replaced by something else. That's true for other images, that's why other licenses are allowed (although you could argue that for example essays could be licensed under other licenses too, since it would be easy to strip them out). But the point is that too many choices are confusing and could lead to problems because of license incompatibility. NoDerivs is especially something we shouldn't encourage by putting it into the dropdown (for own works at least). -- Nx  / talk 14:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So is it less that it is incompatible and more we would no like it? I can't see why we should not make people aware of their options. We can still make it clear which we prefer, however I see no reason why we should restrict them to our choice of licensing. 14:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The dropdown box is not the place to do that. (make people aware of their options that is) -- Nx  / talk 14:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So what, people upload their picture and then change the licensing when they find out there are other options? Seems like the perfect place to give them their options. 14:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, they should learn more about licensing before choosing. You cannot explain the various licenses and why we prefer one over the other in the dropdown box. -- Nx  / talk 14:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought the words RationalWiki preferred would help. So what we have a link explaining all the licences to them and why we prefer CC-by-sa 3.0 then what, they come back to the upload page and we don't give them the other options to choose from the menu? 14:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You are right about that, but the menu is already too long (and it doesn't have all the options anyway). I think we should split it like Wikipedia does, using fake languages. -- Nx  / talk 14:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay. Anything I can do to help? 14:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Basically, we create subpages of this page, e.g. MediaWiki:Licenses/en-ownwork, then we use the uselang parameter to make it use the en-ownwork "language". We do the same to MediaWiki:Uploadtext. Then we can either put links to these special versions of the upload form on MediaWiki:Uploadtext, or we can change the upload file toolbox link to point to a different page, e.g. RationalWiki:Upload (this is what WP does). Here's what WP has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Licenses and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Uploadtext&namespace=8 -- Nx  / talk 15:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've ironed out the problems, it should work now, but I have to manually add the fake languages in LocalSettings.php, otherwise the messagecache will not be updated when you edit the messages, and you'd have to wait a day for it to happen. I've added en-ownwork so far. -- Nx  / talk 16:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

And here's an example link copied from Wikipedia, which also preloads the information template: -- Nx  / talk 17:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Entirely [ my own work] - I created it, own all the rights to it, and have not used anyone else's work in making it

Different topic
Can we make the none selected stick down the Template:Nolicence automatically or will that upset things? 14:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, unfortunately MW can't do that. -- Nx  / talk 14:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thought as much. 14:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I can write a patch to disable the "none selected" option if MediaWiki:Licenses exists, so we could just add a none-selected option here (with a template subst to insert the date) -- Nx  / talk 14:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, but you don't have to go to trouble on my account. 14:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's done. -- Nx  / talk 15:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 15:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Annoying red template
I thought we wanted that added by default so we can find all images that are undocumented? 01:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * nope -- Nx  / talk 01:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That was just Weaeloid having a cry because he got spanked twice in one week about his tendency to upload what ever he felt like, under what eve license he felt like. That will still be a problem regardless. 01:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Regardless, the first entry cannot be a group header, because it doesn't work properly (the browser will select the group even though it's unselectable) -- Nx  / talk 01:39, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is a header necessary? Besides it works well with your new tool (I think) it produces no box. 01:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not necessary, but what I'm saying is that the first entry cannot be a header, because you get inconsistent behavior. On Chrome, the header is selected initially (which should be unselectable) instead of the first selectable entry, but you can't select it again when you change the selection. Firefox behaves differently, but I don't remember how. -- Nx  / talk 01:46, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Can I clear the header then? 01:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Which header? -- Nx  / talk 01:57, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Any/all. 01:59, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Why'd you want to do that? -- Nx  / talk 02:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Because the list is very long, also we don't currently have a default template. 02:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * without the headers it would still be long and it would much more difficult to find the relevant license. -- Nx  / talk 02:09, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Can I still remove the pipe separator then so we get our default upload template still? 03:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You have to remove the first option completely. -- Nx  / talk 03:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it necessary or can you just set the default upload template to option 2? 03:52, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is necessary. -- Nx  / talk 03:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I mean. -- Nx  / talk 04:10, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Cheers. 04:12, 2 May 2010 (UTC)