Hi everyone, I wanted to discuss the copyright license we release our content under, currently the GNU Free Documentation License.
This license was chosen, because at the time it was what Wikipedia licensed their content under. Wikipedia has since migrated to the Creative Commons Share-alike license.
GFDL is actually intended for software documentation, and CC-by-SA is a much more realistic "copyleft" license for content platforms such as wiki's. Below is a comparison between the two copyright licenses:
There would not be any expectation of change to TG, this change is just to continue our alignment with Wikipedia and similar platforms.
If you have any questions or feedback feel free to chime in below. We'll see what the consensus is at the end of the year and if this sounds okay to everyone, we'll make the new license effective January 1st, 2025. Thanks! --Hyarion (talk) 08:48, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
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- I'm not very familiar with GDFL, but a big make-it-or-break it thing for me is them both being share-alike, which they are. I didn't think the Wikipedia comparison is comprehensive enough, so I looked up two points:
- Attribution: GDFL doesn't supply a mechanism for the author to be attributed. so in theory, an image or an article can be perpetually distributed across various channels without anyone ever attributing its creator. The BY in CC-BY-SA ensures that the article is continuously attributed with a tag (eg: Attribution: Tolkien Gateway) so everyone knows where it came from.
- Derivatives: a CC license allows for a work modifying the original material to "break out" of the license if the modifications are transformative enough, GDFL does not. That means that if someone builds a one hundred-word article around ten words taken from TG, they should be able to release it under whatever other license they wish, they did most of the work in that hundred-word article (though they would still need to attribute the original article's creator). A less-obvious benefit of this is that if someone modifies the meaning of those original ten words (in a negative way, for example), they will have to specify that this is a modification done by them on a TG-original article - so it would be clear that TG did not perform (or agrees with) that modification.
- These are both good things in my opinion, they not only allow the free distribution of knowledge but also ensure that the work done by TG and its editors is recognized as such, while work that changes the meaning of the original material is disassociated. Not having to attach the GDFL license text to everything is the icing on the cake. ✽ Ayapo (talk) 15:12, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
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- Sounds good to me. --Mord 16:38, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
- I agree, CC-by-SA is better for wikis. The requirement to attach the entire text of the GDFL to every use of the content is unrealistic, and that's bad because if one requirement is ignored, it risks more important ones (e.g. attribution) being ignored as well. --Pachyderminator 07:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
There does not seem to be any objections, so I have updated our license to the CC-by-SA and will be updating the corresponding verbiage and logos in the coming days. Thanks everyone!