User:Fyren/Licensing

This article attemps to address some of the licensing issues and questions that might be brought up concerning GuildWiki and ArenaNet's announced wiki. The short version, however, is that:
 * In general, content from either wiki cannot freely be moved to the other.
 * Content where all contributors who have made non-trivial edits have agreed to license their work under both the GFDL and CC by-nc-sa 2.0 can be freely moved (with the terms of the common license being followed).

Licenses
GuildWiki's content is available under the Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0) license. ArenaNet has said their wiki will use the GNU Free Documentation License.  These licenses contain different requirements and so content under one license cannot automatically be made available under the other.

Licensing contributions
When an editor makes a contribution to GuildWiki, they are making their content available under the CC license. When a user clicks edit, under the edit box there is text to this effect. GuildWiki can then display your content, others can edit your content, and your content can be redistributed all according to the terms of the license. With everything under once license, contributors don't have to worry much about copyright issues when editing. ANet's wiki will presumably work in the same manner, just with the GFDL instead the CC license.

License incompatibility
While GuildWiki could contain GFDL'd content (or ANet's wiki could contain CC licensed content), the incompatibility of the licenses would likely lead to annoyance and confusion even in the best case. Consider a scenario where a certain article on GuildWiki were under the GFDL:


 * Any edits made to that article would also need to be licensed under the GFDL.


 * A user could not merge information from elsewhere on GuildWiki into the article. The copied content can't be relicensed under the GFDL and the GFDL content can't be relicensed under the CC, so the combined work can't be used.


 * The article would need to be flagged as a special case. Statements about copyrights and licenses (like under the edit box) would need to note the caveat that certain pages might not be under the normal license.  Contributors editing such a page would have to be aware of the difference and what it entails.

Most users aren't concerned with copyright issues and can't be expected to handle situations like the above correctly. Having a single license eliminates the problem.

Multiple licensing
While a contributor's edits are always available under the wiki's own license, contributors can agree to also license their contributions under any license they like. Each contributor, after all, owns the copyright for his specific contributions. For example, Wikipedia uses the GFDL. However, some editors choose to state on their user pages that all of their contributions are also available under some other license or even that they release their contributions into the public domain. A contributor can decide to license their own contributions under an additional at any time. However, under the GFDL and CC, they can't decide to later retract the license.

This can provide a means for sharing content between GuildWiki and ANet's wiki. For example, if an article on GuildWiki has only been edited by users who have agreed to make their contributions available under the GFDL, the article can be copied to ANet's wiki.

Issues with multiple licensing
There are, however, constraints that make multiple licensing unviable for many situations.

All contributions must be multi-licensed for copying
The most obvious problem with the multiple licensing solution is that all non-trivial contributors need to agree to it. (Contributors who make trivial edits such as spelling corrections can't copyright their contribution under US law). If at some point a contributor on GuildWiki makes an edit they haven't licensed under the GFDL, their change cannot be included in the article if it's copied to ANet's wiki. For example, consider the case on GuildWiki where contributors Mhenlo and Aidan agree to make their contributions available under the GFDL but Cynn does not: In this case, only versions 1 and 2 may be copied to ANet's wiki. Version 4 could be copied, but only if Cynn's edit was undone and Mhenlo's later edit was not based on Cynn's edit.
 * 1) Mhenlo starts the article "why monks are the best."
 * 2) Aidan edits it to point out some obvious untruths, perhaps insinuating rangers are, in fact, the best.
 * 3) Cynn reverts Aidan's changes and adds some references to elementalists.
 * 4) Mhenlo makes some edits and points out that elementalists can be pretty cute.

Perhaps Cynn could be persuaded to license her contributions under the GFDL, making all revisions available to be copied. But perhaps Cynn is on vacation or vowed to never edit GuildWiki again and can't be contacted. In this case, you're stuck with versions 1, 2, and maybe an edited 4.

Anonymous editors are problematic. It's unlikely you'll be able to contact one for an agreement to use an additional license.

Once copied, content may not necessarily be copied back
Another problem is that content copied from one wiki to the other might not be available to be copied back after it is edited. After copying, the content may be edited by someone who hasn't agreed to licensing their work under both licenses. For example, considering Mhenlo again and also Professor Gai, a user of ANet's wiki who hasn't agreed to make his contributions available under the CC license: Gai's edits can't be copied back to GuildWiki since his changes are not available under the CC license.
 * 1) Mhenlo starts an article "comparison of female elementalist armor."
 * 2) Gai finds Mhenlo's article to be particularly stimulating and copies it to ANet's wiki (with attribution).
 * 3) Gai edits the article to include more detailed screenshots and commentary.