changing content licenses (OPL => CC BY SA)

[Karsten Wade]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 06:54:18PM -0400, Eric Christensen wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-06-25 at 18:48 -0400, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > On 06/25/2009 03:22 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
> > > When we went from GFDL to OPL we specifically had to ask everyone
> > > because none of the content works were under the Fedora CLA.  The
> > > stated reasoning at the time iirc was, we wouldn't have to do this
> > > check with everyone again if we had to relicense because we had the
> > > CLA.
> > 
> > I think the important distinction that I missed was that I thought you
> > were only referring to the reference documentation in the separate files
> > (e.g. Release Guide), where there are well defined lists of the
> > contributors. For the wiki, that task is far too major and we would
> > definitely want to leverage the CLA to relicense that content.
> > 
> 
> There is still a problem, though.  Most, if not all, of our guides start
> on the wiki.  I know a lot of information that went into the Security
> Guide came from the wiki and thus from various developers.

Aye, there's the rub.  I think only the Installation Guide doesn't
have wiki sourcing in it.

One difference going in to the future is that we have worked on having
improved editing via the Docs CMS (Zikula), and I can foresee Docs
moving most of this editing to the improved wysiwyg environment in
Zikula.  We could enact a different type of contribution policy for
the Docs CMS than for the wiki, although I think we'd want to focus on
keeping the barriers the same (i.e., no CLA per-se for the relnotes
writing part of the CMS with a deeper reaching policy?)

Perhaps we have a funnel+filter approach like this for any guide
written on the wiki, from Release Notes to User Guide.  Let's take the
release notes beats as a use case:

* Consider a new namespace ([[Relnote:]]?) if that helps us sequester
  that content better.

* Make it clear that editing the relnotes on the wiki beyond a certain
  level may require a contribution agreement.

* Minor edits and additions that are not copyrightable are considered
  safe for conversion from wiki to CLA-covered guides in an SCM.

* Major edits and contributions require i) the editor actually have a
  CLA with Fedora Project, and ii) they agree to be tracked/included
  as an author.

* When we include relnotes content, the Docs Team needs to add the
  steps of attributing contributions that are copyrightable.  This is
  done by identifying the changes via the wiki history tool, then
  including a brief description and permanent URI for that history
  change in the SCM commit; ideally, one commit per attribution in
  some reasonable fashion. This allows tracking back for any future
  copyright requirements.

Wow, that's a bit of extra work.  Is it worth it?  It might be
necessary regardless.  Automating the last step in some manner would
be a good idea.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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