Subject: Re-licensing the Alpine wiki

From: "Drew DeVault" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:01:51 +0100

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.

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.

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.

[0]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html

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From: Ariadne Conill <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2022 04:21:15 -0600 (CST)

Hello,

>> 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.

> reliensing statement, or rewrite the last few pages which are still

This seems like a reasonable plan.

> 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

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From: Kevin Daudt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2022 11:55:56 +0100

On Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 04:21:15AM -0600, Ariadne Conill wrote:
> 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].

+1 for CC-BY-SA

---

From: "Drew DeVault" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:23:41 +0100

> the Alpine Handbook, which is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0[0].

No objection here.

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From: Leonardo Arena <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2022 14:40:53 +0100

Hi,

On 02/01/22 11:21, Ariadne Conill wrote:
> 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].
>

Sounds a good plan to me.

Thanks!

leo