Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2018/September

CC-BY 4.0 as default license in upload forms

I suggest that CC-BY 4.0 should be the default suggested licensing when using the upload forms in Wikimedia projects for own works, instead of the current CC BY-SA 4.0 license (example here at Wikinews), sometimes with dual GFDL licensing (example at Wikipedia). The main difference would be that derivatives are not required to have the same license. Reasons for changing to CC-BY 4.0 are:

• It is a more permissive license.

• It makes it much easier to combine and mix works. The combination of the two images at right, for example, would not have been possible at all if the images were licensed under let's say CC BY-SA 4.0 for the first one and CC BY-NC 2.0 for the other. However, if either was CC-BY 4.0 it would have been permitted. See WP:Adaptation for further information in this regard.
• CC-BY is by far the most popular licensing for open access journals (see Directory of Open Access Journals - Journal license tab), and is similarly popular in databases (see CC: Data and CC licenses). CC BY-SA is therefore not compatible for inclusion in most open access journals, denying them free access to the sum of Wikimedia knowledge.
• Most uploaders may very well be as willing to upload under CC-BY, but may not be familiar with the differences between having SA or not. The current upload form layouts thus make lots of works receiving a more restrictive licensing than necessary. Just because uploaders can upload under the most restrictive license Wikimedia has to offer doesn't mean they need to be presented with that option by default. Those who still want to put the additional SA restriction would still be able to actively choose so.
• The currently suggested dual licensing with CC BY-SA 4.0 with GFDL such as in Wikipedia (link to form) is actually incompatible in a strict sense (see Wikipedia section on this matter, and is also a lot of extra read for those who want to know what GFDL means, since it doesn't provide the short presentation as given in Creative Commons licenses (compare GFDL license page to the CC BY-SA 4.0 page. It would therefore be both easier for uploaders and more legally correct if we simply dropped GFDL from the default license suggestion. Again, those who do want to choose dual licensing for some reason would still be able to actively choose so.

I want to know if you agree with this suggestion, and we can then bring it to Wikimedia's legal team for review before implementation. I know the change is technically not that hard, since we only need to change the upload form layouts, not the licenses of any already uploaded works, nor the overall licensing of any wiki. I've started a vote on this issue in Wikimedia Commons. Please go to that page to join:

• Commons:Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#CC-BY 4.0 as default license in upload forms

Mikael Häggström (talk) 21:03, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Hello! Currently I do not see a reason to switch. We require derivatives to have the same license now, as otherwise I believe the content may be distributed in a proprietary fashion; is there a reason to want that? See also Copyleft. --Gryllida (chat) 21:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Copyleft is a curse, to be honest. And I am very much in favour of having BSD or more free licence wherever possible. The fear of "Oh, I think someone will use it in proprietary fashion" is very immature -- let it me media or the code. So much for open source and free media so that you are not willing to allow more creativity for rebuilding? I am not sure what Wikinews can do about it. And as far as I know, it is second to Wikidata for having the most permissible licence. Fuck GNU and their licences.
•–• 21:30, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Upcoming math announcement

Scuttlebutt says somebody may make an announcement next Tuesday (that would be September 25) regarding the Reimann hypothesis (which is considered to be part of a Hilbert problem, from 1900, as well as a Clay Institute Millennium Prize Problem. (Link: [1].) I could even imagine trying, if a viable story emerges on Tuesday and there are no other demands on my time, to write it up myself; but of course I'm not greatly in practice on the writing side and there's more likely to be difficulty finding a reviewer if I'm the reporter. --Pi zero (talk) 23:48, 20 September 2018 (UTC)