Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2022 04:21:15 -0600 (CST)
From: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
To: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
cc: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: Re-licensing the Alpine wiki
In-Reply-To: <CGV3OCWKRGB3.24UAJKDTCLEQN@taiga>
Message-ID: <49b58698-c3d7-58fe-4745-5aa8b829e416@dereferenced.org>
References: <CGV3OCWKRGB3.24UAJKDTCLEQN@taiga>
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Hello,

On Sun, 2 Jan 2022, Drew DeVault wrote:

> Briefly discussed on IRC.
>
> The Alpine wiki has a weird non-free non-license:
>
>> All content is copyrighted by the original authors. It may not be
>> republished in any form without prior permission.

I believe this is the default license MediaWiki installs when you do not 
choose a free license, rather than any intentional decision.

> https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux:Privacy_policy#Copyright
>
> This should be corrected. I propose this procedure:
>
> 1. From a given cut-over date, all wiki edits following that date use
>   the GNU Free Documentation License[0].
> 2. A page is established on which all existing contributors can
>   voluntarily agree to retroactively relicense their contributions.
>
> This will cause the wiki to become more freely licensed over time, and
> gives us a means of establishing the licensing situation for any
> particular page should someone want to reuse it. Perhaps in a couple of
> years we can re-evaluate the situation and nag a few stragglers for a
> reliensing statement, or rewrite the last few pages which are still
> nonfree.

This seems like a reasonable plan.

> I picked the GNU FDL essentially arbitrarily to reduce bikeshedding. The
> Arch Wiki uses it, so there's some precedent. We could use Creative
> Commons if someone really cares about it. I expect that this will be a
> relatively straightforward, uncontroversial change.

I think it would be better to use CC-BY-SA.  This would be aligned with 
the Alpine Handbook, which is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0[0].

[0]: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/docs/user-handbook/-/blob/master/LICENSE

Ariadne